NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Breaks Distance Record After Nine Years

A rover has been making its way across the surface of Mars for nine years, steadily recording data during its lone trek. Now, Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity has broken a record. It's travelled the farthest of any extraterrestrial vehicle.

On May 15, Opportunity drove 263 feet southward along the western rim of the Endeavour Crater. This particular impact crater is about 14 miles in diameter, and possesses minerals that may have formed under wet conditions in a low-acidic environment during the early history of Mars. As the vehicle travelled, though, it broke the all-time record for longest distance voyaged. In total, Opportunity has gone 22.22 miles since it first landed on the Red Planet in 2004.

The last record for a NASA vehicle driving on a world other than Earth was set by the astronaut-driven Lunar Roving Vehicle of the Apollo 17 mission to Earth's moon. Set in 1972, the vehicle travelled 22.21 miles in total over the lunar surface.

"The record we established with a roving vehicle was meant to be broken, and I'm excited and proud to be able to pass the torch to Opportunity," said Eugene Cernan, the astronaut who helped drive the lunar vehicle that held the previous record, in a news release.

That's not to say that there isn't another vehicle that holds an even bigger record, though. The international record for driving distance on another world is still held by the Soviet Union's remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover. This particular vehicle travelled 23 miles on the surface of Earth's moon in 1973.

Even so, Opportunity's trek is still impressive. Currently, the rover is continuing to conduct research on the surface of Mars. This week, the rover began a multi-week trek from an area where it has been working since mid-2011, the "Cape York" segment of the rim of Endeavour Crater, to an area about 1.4 miles away. This particular region is called "Solander Point."

As Opportunity keeps on trekking, it's likely that it may one day pass the international record for longest distance, as well. Whether or not that day will come any time soon, though, is up to NASA.