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@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
 * Origin: NCS BBS - Houma, LoUiSiAna (1:3828/7)