--- title: NASA Mars Rover Breaks Driving Record description: Opportunity Mars Rover has driven 25 miles and surpassed expectations since it reached the planet in 2004 canonical: https://time.com/3048733/nasa-mars-rover-driving-record/ author: Nolan Feeney article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-07-28T21:15:09.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T09:22:58.976Z article:section: Science og:title: NASA Mars Rover Breaks Driving Record og:description: Opportunity Mars Rover has driven 25 miles and surpassed expectations since it reached the planet in 2004 og:url: https://time.com/3048733/nasa-mars-rover-driving-record/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0f947d122971aa98/69869d8a3bc999116e1a4b6e/ap750705025440.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: Mars Rover og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: NASA Mars Rover Breaks Driving Record twitter:description: Opportunity Mars Rover has driven 25 miles and surpassed expectations since it reached the planet in 2004 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0f947d122971aa98/69869d8a3bc999116e1a4b6e/ap750705025440.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # NASA Mars Rover Breaks Driving Record  by [Nolan Feeney](https://time.com/author/nolan-feeney/)  ## Nolan Feeney Jul 28, 2014 9:15 PM UTC  An artist's rendering of NASA’s Opportunity Mars Rover An artist's rendering of NASA’s Opportunity Mars RoverNASA/AP  by [Nolan Feeney](https://time.com/author/nolan-feeney/)  ## Nolan Feeney Jul 28, 2014 9:15 PM UTC NASA’s Opportunity Mars Rover has set a new record for the [longest off-Earth driving distance](http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-245), the administration announced. Opportunity has driven 25 miles since it arrived on Mars in 2004\. It crossed the milestone after a 157-foot drive on Sunday. “This is so remarkable considering Opportunity was intended to drive about one kilometer and was never designed for distance,” John Callas, Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager, said in a statement. “But what is really important is not how many miles the rover has racked up, but how much exploration and discovery we have accomplished over that distance.” Opportunity is traveling along the rim of the Endeavor Crater, where NASA has gathered evidence of ancient water supply that was less acidic than those studied elsewhere on the planet. As the rover approached this milestone, the team behind it named a 20-foot-wide Mars crater after the previous record holder, the Soviet Union’s Lunokhod 2, which drove 24.2 miles on the moon in 1973. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3048733/nasa-mars-rover-driving-record/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3048733/nasa-mars-rover-driving-record/"},"headline":"NASA Mars Rover Breaks Driving Record","datePublished":"2014-07-28T21:15:09.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T09:22:58.976Z","description":"Opportunity Mars Rover has driven 25 miles and surpassed expectations since it reached the planet in 2004","url":"https://time.com/3048733/nasa-mars-rover-driving-record/","keywords":["space travel","NASA","Mars"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0f947d122971aa98/69869d8a3bc999116e1a4b6e/ap750705025440.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nolan Feeney","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/nolan-feeney/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0f947d122971aa98/69869d8a3bc999116e1a4b6e/ap750705025440.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Mars Rover","caption":"Mars Rover","creditText":"NASA/AP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/space-travel/","name":"space travel"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3048733/nasa-mars-rover-driving-record/","name":"NASA Mars Rover Breaks Driving Record"}}]}] ```