Mars Rover Sets Off-World Driving Record
 
July 28, 2014: NASA's Opportunity Mars rover, which landed on the Red
Planet in 2004, now holds the off-Earth roving distance record after
accruing 25 miles (40 kilometers) of driving, and is not far from
completing the first extraterrestrial marathon. The previous record was
held by the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 rover.
 
"Opportunity has driven farther than any other wheeled vehicle on
another world," said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John
Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
"This is so remarkable considering Opportunity was intended to drive
about one kilometer and was never designed for distance."
 
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/14-202a_0.jpg
 
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, working on Mars since January
2004, passed 25 miles of total driving on July 27, 2014. The gold line on
this map shows Opportunity's route from the landing site inside Eagle
Crater (upper left) to its location after the July 27 (Sol 3735) drive.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/NMMNHS
 
A drive of 157 feet (48 meters) on July 27 put Opportunity's total odometry
at 25.01 miles (40.25 kilometers).This month's driving brought the rover
southward along the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The rover had driven
more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) before arriving at Endeavour Crater in
2011, where it has examined outcrops on the crater's rim containing clay
and sulfate-bearing minerals. The sites are yielding evidence of ancient
environments with less acidic water than those examined at Opportunity's
landing site.
 
If the rover can continue to operate the distance of a marathon -- 26.2
miles (about 42.2 kilometers) -- it will approach the next major
investigation site mission scientists have dubbed "Marathon
Valley." Observations from spacecraft orbiting Mars suggest several
clay minerals are exposed close together at this valley site, surrounded by
steep slopes where the relationships among different layers may be evident.
 
The Russian Lunokhod 2 rover, a successor to the first Lunokhod mission in
1970, landed on Earth's moon on Jan. 15, 1973, where it drove about 24.2
miles (39 kilometers) in less than five months, according to calculations
recently made using images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)
cameras that reveal Lunokhod 2's tracks.
 
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/14-202b.jpg
 
This chart provides a comparison of the distances driven by various wheeled
vehicles on the surface of Mars and Earth's moon. Click to view the
complete chart.
 
Irina Karachevtseva at Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography's
Extraterrestrial Laboratory in Russia, Brad Jolliff of Washington
University in St. Louis, Tim Parker of JPL, and others, collaborated to
verify the map-based methods for computing distances are comparable for
Lunokhod-2 and Opportunity.
 
"The Lunokhod missions still stand as two signature accomplishments of
what I think of as the first golden age of planetary exploration, the 1960s
and '70s," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, New
York, and principal investigator for NASA's twin Mars rovers, Opportunity
and Spirit. "We're in a second golden age now, and what we've tried to
do on Mars with Spirit and Opportunity has been very much inspired by the
accomplishments of the Lunokhod team on the moon so many years ago. It has
been a real honor to follow in their historical wheel tracks."
 
As Opportunity neared the mileage record earlier this year, the rover team
chose the name Lunokhod 2 for a crater about 20 feet (6 meters) in diameter
on the outer slope of Endeavour's rim on Mars.
 
As impressive as the distance record is, concludes Callas, even more
impressive is "how much exploration and discovery we have accomplished
over that distance." For more information about the many discoveries
of NASA's Mars rovers, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers
 
Credits:
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit:
Science{at}NASA
 
More information
 
The Mars Exploration Rover Project is one element of NASA's ongoing and
future Mars missions preparing for a human mission to the planet in the
2030s. JPL manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate
(SMD), in Washington. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt,
Maryland, manages LRO for SMD.
 
An image of Lunokhod 2's tracks, as imaged by NASA's LRO, is available
online at: http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/posts/774
 
The Mars rover home page at JPL is  http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov
 
Follow the Mars rover project on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/MarsRovers
 
On Facebook, visit: http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers
 
 
Regards,
 
Roger

--- D'Bridge 3.99