Opportunity Passes 40-Year-Old Record

While Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt visited Earth’s Moon for three days in December 1972, they drove their mission’s Lunar Roving Vehicle 19.3 nautical miles (22.21 statute miles or 35.74 kilometers). That was the farthest total distance for any NASA vehicle driving on a world other than Earth until the other day.

The team operating NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity received confirmation in a transmission from Mars today that the rover drove 263 feet (80 meters) on Thursday, bringing Opportunity’s total odometry since landing on Mars in January 2004 to 22.22 statute miles (35.76 kilometers).

Cernan discussed this prospect a few days ago with Opportunity team member Jim Rice of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The Apollo 17 astronaut said, “The record we established with a roving vehicle was made to be broken, and I’m excited and proud to be able to pass the torch to Opportunity.”

The international record for driving distance on another world is still held by the Soviet Union’s remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover, which traveled 23 miles (37 kilometers) on the surface of Earth’s Moon in 1973.

Opportunity began a multi-week trek this week from an area where it has been working since mid-2011, the “Cape York” segment of the rim of Endeavor Crater, to an area about 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) away, “Solander Point.”

Contact:
Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
+1 818-354-6278
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL also manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project and its rover, Curiosity, which landed on Mars in August 2012.

More information about Opportunity:
http://www.nasa.gov/rovers
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov