Mars Rover Travels a Marathon
The Mars rover has been on the red planet for 11 years and this past Tuesday it ran a marathon. It traveled 26.2 miles on the surface of Mars becoming the first human creation to do so.
To celebrate the feat the Jet Propulsion Lab plans a marathon-length relay run at the lab this week. The landmark also represents the Rover’s long-term mission of gathering information about ancient water on Mars that could have supported life.
The previous greatest distance was held by the Soviet Union’s Lunokhod 2 moon rover.