NASA's Opportunity Mars rover is officially the off-Earth roving distance record-holder after reaching the 40-kilometer (25-mile) mark over the weekend with a 48-meter Sunday spin on the surface of the Red Planet.
The previous record-holder was the USSR's Lunokhod 2 rover, which traveled 39 kilometers on the surface of the Moon during its four-month mission in 1973. NASA's Apollo 17 Lunar Rover, which traveled 35.7 kilometers on the Moon back in 1972, still holds the record for furthest distance traveled off-Earth by a manned vehicle.
NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, has traveled about 8.6 kilometers so far.
"Opportunity has driven farther than any other wheeled vehicle on another world," Mars Exploration Rover project manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement.
"This is so remarkable considering Opportunity was intended to drive about one kilometer and was never designed for distance. But what is really important is not how many miles the rover has racked up, but how much exploration and discovery we have accomplished over that distance."
Below, you can see the distance Opportunity has traveled since landing near Eagle crater on Mars more than 10 years ago. The rover drove about 32 kilometers to reach Endeavour Crater in 2011, where it "has examined outcrops on the crater's rim containing clay and sulfate-bearing minerals," NASA said.
Opportunity arrived on Mars in January 2004 and is still chugging around near the western rim of Endeavour Crater. Following Sunday's jaunt, the rover's odometer now reads 40.25 kilometers traveled, or just a tick over 25 miles.
NASA has now set its sights on guiding Opportunity towards an investigation site, dubbed "Marathon Valley," Callas said. Appropriately enough, if the rover makes it there, it will have traveled 26.2 miles, or the distance of a marathon. The space agency is hoping Opportunity can become a true marathoner, because it's believed that exposed layers of clay materials at Marathon Valley will prove fruitful to study.
Below you can see a comparison of different distances traveled by manned and unmanned vehicles on the Moon and Mars, courtesy of NASA.
