Mars: a robot broke the record for distance – Los Andes (Argentina)

Opportunity

small vehicle, sent to Mars by NASA in 2005, he has covered more distance on the red planet than any other vehicle on artificial celestial body, the U.S. space agency announced.

Since its arrival at Mars, Opportunity, powered by solar energy, ran 40 kilometers above the Martian surface. And broke the official record set by Lunokhod 2 robot, launched by the Soviet Union to the moon in 1973.

“Opportunity went further than any other vehicle rolling on the surface of another world,” said John Callas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA in Pasadena, California. “It is remarkable when you consider that Opportunity had no plans to roll more than 1 km and that was not designed to travel those distances,”

Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, now out of use, he added. Discovered traces of wet environments on Mars that could be conducive to life. Opportunity is now exploring Endeavour Crater on Mars.

His descendant, the Curiosity robot sent in 2012, ran for his part being Only Smarter 8,6 km far, NASA said. And his fate will not allow you to start walking as much distance as its predecessor, Opportunity.

According to Nasa, Lunokhod 2, which landed on the moon on January 15, 1973, ran 39 km in less five months.

Quote in space: a probe will join a kite

After an odyssey of more than a decade and 6,000 million km of route in space, the European space probe Rosetta arrive on Wednesday for his appointment with a comet to investigate the origin of these enigmatic bodies wander the solar system.

The meeting will mark a key stage in the most ambitious project ever undertaken by the European Space Agency (ESA).

More than 400 million km from Earth, Rosetta will reach 100 km of their target, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The meeting will end a I journey started in March 2004, which began with the probe repeatedly circling Mars and Earth to build momentum using its gravitational force to gain speed and then followed with a period of hibernation that allowed you to save energy.

After a final series of braking maneuvers, Rosetta be Wednesday about 100 km of the comet, a feat of navigation, if all goes well, will be the prelude to an unprecedented scientific exploration.

“is took more than ten years to get there, “says Sylvain Lodiot, head of space operations. “Now we must learn to tie us to the comet and stay with him over the coming months,” he says.

Bright in the night sky on his lonely race around the sun, comets have been for a long time made omen wonderful or terrible. the birth or death of kings and messiahs, fabulous harvests, famine or disaster

Astrophysicists, however, see comets with different eyes. They believe that they are aggregates of primordial dust and ice remaining debris of the formation of the solar system occurred 4,600 million years ago.