NASA’s Mars Rover Opportunity is set to complete the first extraterrestrial marathon, spanning a distance of 22-miles. This is notable because “Opportunity and its late twin, Spirit, were designed to drive about one-third of a mile in total. And the fact that Opportunity drives about 160 to 330 feet a day.” Continue reading for a video and more information.
Its main mission has been to look for water, and both rovers have found slam-dunk evidence that the Red Planet used to be a wet planet. Opportunity first found evidence of water at a site called Eagle Crater, and then spent the next few years driving around deeper and larger craters nearby. Since August of last year, it’s been exploring Endeavour Crater, after traversing tricky Martian terrain “with no aid stations anywhere,” as NASA Science cheekily puts it. It even had to drive backwards for a while after a wheel injury.
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