The Mars Opportunity rover breaks previous, long-standing Soviet record, so in
yer face, RUSSKIES!! The NASA Opportunity Mars rover landed on Mars ten years ago, and was not expected to last over a decade in the harsh Martian environment...but ten years later NASA scientists are still driving the rover around Mars looking at stuff. And the mileage has added up.
NASA just announced (//vny!://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-245) that Opportunity now "holds the off-Earth roving distance record after accruing 25 miles (40 kilometers) of driving."
This month's driving brought the rover southward along the western rim of Endeavour Crater. A manually-controlled drive of 157 feet (48 meters) on July 27 put Opportunity's total traveled distance at 25.01 miles (40.25 kilometers).
The previous record of 23 miles (37km) was held by the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 rover which landed on the Moon in 1973. Lunokhod 2, however, only operated for about 4 months before it died.
So yeah, we in the USA may have lots of homeless people and hungry people and inflation and high unemployment and shitty wages and no public healthcare and no savings, but a decade ago we built a kick-ass Mars rover. So there, HA!
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/image/marsOpportunity.jpg)
