According to NASA, Opportunity became the record for the mileage among all extraterrestrial spacecraft.

This is the way Opportunity has done in 10 long years.

NASA reported that the Mars rover Opportunity, located on Mars for more than 10 years, covered a distance of 40.25 kilometers. According to the agency, this is more than Lunokhod-2 passed (39 kilometers) more than 40 years ago.

True, the Lunokhod-2 took only about 5 months to overcome 39 kilometers, and the Opportunity rover ten years, as mentioned above.
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And yes, there is still an interesting moment - in the same Wikipedia it is said that Lunokhod-2 passed a total of about 42 kilometers, and not 39. If so, then Lunokhod is still a record for “extraterrestrial mileage.”

If you remember, it was originally planned that the life of the rover will be 90 days, and it should have passed only 1 kilometer. There are no special problems with the operation of the rover even now, despite a more than 40-fold excess of the device’s planned lifetime.



Currently, the veteran rover is in the area of ​​the Endeavor crater, and continues to move forward. Freshwater clay was discovered near this crater, which is direct evidence of the existence of freshwater in the past of Mars.

It turned out that the rock has a high content of elements such as silicon and aluminum, and some composition parameters suggest that it is clay formed under the influence of fresh water. Note that earlier traces of water were also found, but it was salt water with a high level of acidity, which, according to some scientists, was not suitable for life.



NASA expects that soon the rover will be able to overcome the marathon distance of 42.2 kilometers. If the rover becomes a "marathon", then no one will have doubts about his leadership.

Via nasa