Originally published on January 6, 2014
NASA's longest-running Mars rover, Opportunity, has covered a record-breaking 22 miles as it approaches its 10th year on the Red Planet.
Opportunity launched from Cape Canaveral on July 7, 2003. After traveling 283 million miles through space over seven months, Opportunity landed on Mars on January 25, 2004. It rolled to a stop in the shallow Eagle's Crater in what the NASA scientists called an "interplanetary hole-in-one."
Opportunity and its twin rover Spirit were designed for 90 Martian-day missions to uncover evidence for liquid water that may have supported life on the planet. Just a few weeks after landing, Opportunity found mineral crystallizations likely to have been left behind by the passage of water. The rover, now pushing towards its 10th year on the planet, continues to make novel findings.
The 384-pound rover runs on solar power and uses a panoramic camera for navigation. It is also equipped with a microscopic imager and a spectrometer to study Mars' surface geology. Collected data is transmitted back to earth via low- and high-gain antennas.
In 2005 Opportunity became trapped in a 12-inch sand dune. NASA scientists managed to wrangle the rover out of the sand using a series of commands they devised after conducting simulations in a sandbox on Earth. Opportunity encountered a severe dust storm in 2007, and the rover's power-generating capabilities dipped to only 20 percent in the haze.
Currently, Opportunity is scaling the Endeavour Crater and headed towards Solander Point, where tens of meters of geological layering are exposed for analysis.
Since May of 2013, Opportunity has held the U.S. record for greatest total mileage covered on a surface apart from Earth. It is expected to surpass the world record held by the Soviet Lunokhod 2 lunar rover.
Opportunity's sister rover, Spirit, stopped running on Mars in 2011. NASA's Mars Science Exploration Laboratory rover Curiosity landed on the planet in August 2012 and has been exploring the Gale crater area.
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