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Opportunity Rover Sets Off-World Driving Record

Posted by Soulskill on from the rollin'-rollin'-rollin' dept.

schwit1 writes: "With a drive of 157 feet on Sunday, the Mars rover Opportunity broke the Soviet record, set by Lunokhod 2 in 1973, for the longest distance traveled by a vehicle on another planet. "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."

8 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Poor pluto by lakeland · · Score: 5, Funny

    First it lost its planetary status, and now the moon is classed as a planet for this competition.

    1. Re:Poor pluto by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      They probably used "heavenly body" at first, but editors realized that would generate too many tasteless jokes, and changed it to "planet".

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  2. Re:So, 40 years and beeelions spent.. by Brett+Buck · · Score: 2

    Lunakhod was only on the moon, and was driven at relatively high speeds using live drivers looking at TV to see where to go. This is patently impossibly on Mars due to the light travel time. Semi-autononomous navigation is far more sophisticated.

        It eventually died because of what might be characterized as a driving mistake, they came to close to the edge of a crater, scooped some dust on the solar array, then closed the lid, dumped the dust on the radiators, then overheated when the lid was opened on the next lunar day.

  3. It's only gone 25 miles? by unrtst · · Score: 2

    I realize it's done much more than it was designed for, and we got more bang for our buck, but when I first read TFS, I thought this:

    "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

    ...meant, "If the rover can travel just 26.2 MORE miles THAN IT ALREADY HAS TRAVELED, then..."

    It's been on Mars for over 10 years. It's not a very fast little bugger, is it?

    They had their own goals and all that, but my first goal, if I was sending something millions of miles away (I don't know how far it traveled when it went to Mars, but the closest approach between earth and mars has been 34.8 million miles), I'd certainly want the ability to move it more than XXX feet per day. 25 miles is REALLY short compared to it's 35 million+ mile trip to get there!

    1. Re:It's only gone 25 miles? by Kjella · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They had their own goals and all that, but my first goal, if I was sending something millions of miles away (I don't know how far it traveled when it went to Mars, but the closest approach between earth and mars has been 34.8 million miles), I'd certainly want the ability to move it more than XXX feet per day.

      And a free pony, but the problem is the power budget. Going faster -> more power required -> bigger solar panels -> more weight -> going slower. If you got a solution for that, I'm sure NASA would like to have a talk with you. Also consider that it might be very hard to travel a significant distance, it's easier to drop two rovers on opposite sides of the planet than design a rover that can drive 5000+ km.

      Mars has areas with really sharp rocks and Curiosity has already taken more wheel damage than expected. Soft soil is almost just as bad, potentially trapping the rover as it happened with Opportunity. And there's no tow truck coming, so if you screw it up the mission is over. Personally I imagine it's the scientific equipment that mostly limits the rover, if we haven't got the tools or sensors getting there faster won't do us any good.

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      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  4. Re:Apollo 11 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes, it's been done. Several of the Apollo landing sites have been recently photographed from lunar orbit.
    See here for Apollo 11: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11#mediaviewer/File:Apollo11-LRO-March2012.jpg

  5. Re:So, 40 years and beeelions spent.. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Lunakhod was only on the moon, and was driven at relatively high speeds using live drivers looking at TV to see where to go.

    Interesting trivia: At first the Soviets tried to use experienced drivers. But even to the moon and back is several light seconds, and this lag confused people experienced in driving cars. So they had to find people that had never driven before, with no expectations that the vehicle would respond instantly.

  6. Re:Apollo 11 by Brett+Buck · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You are kidding, right?

    http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pa...

    And of course the "moon landing hoax" nitwits have already convinced themselves that NASA, every involved contractor, all the astronauts, and our bitter rivals the USSR are part of the conspiracy. It would be a small matter to assume that the LRO pictures are also faked. That the fundamental nature of stupidity.