According to press releases from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA Headquarters, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity completed its first Red Planet marathon on Tuesday, clocking 26.219 miles (42.195 kilometers) in 11 years and two months.
"This is the first time any human enterprise has exceeded the distance of a marathon on the surface of another world," said John Callas, Opportunity project manager at JPL, according to the press releases. "A first time happens only once."
The rover team plans a celebratory marathon-length relay race next week in the laboratory.
Last year, Opportunity became the long-distance champion of all off-Earth vehicles when it broke the previous record set by the former Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 Moon rover, according to the press releases.
"This mission isn't about setting distance records, of course; it's about making scientific discoveries on Mars and inspiring future explorers to achieve even more," said Steve Squyres, Opportunity principal investigator at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "Still, running a marathon on Mars feels pretty cool."
