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Mars rover breaks off-world driving record. It’s time we took that back!

After over nine years of roving around on Mars, Opportunity is still racking up some impressive accomplishments, as it just surpassed a 40-year-old U.S. record for off-world driving distance and it's coming very close to setting an all-time record.

As of Thursday, May 16th, Opportunity had driven a total of 35.76 kilometres, surpassing a 40-year-old U.S. record of 35.74 kms, set by the Apollo 17 astronauts driving in a lunar rover back in 1972. The overall record for off-world driving was set by the Russian lunar rover Lunokhod 2 in 1973, which traveled a total of 37 kilometres. So, it's not going to be long before it passes that and takes the lead.

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That is an awesome accomplishment for the rover, which is still running over nine years past the end of its 90-sol mission (a 'sol' is a Martian day, equal to 24 hours and 40 minutes in Earth time). Seriously. Heartfelt congratulations are in order for those who designed and built the plucky little rover and to those who have kept it going for all these years.

However, I can't help but think of the down-side to this accomplishment.

While it's true that humans built Opportunity, and humans control where and how far the rover drives — so it is, in essence still an accomplishment for us as well — surpassing that 40-year off-world distance record for driving by humans also means that there's been 40 years of us not driving around off-world. After December 1972, we've only ventured out as far as low-Earth orbit. No more Moonwalks (beyond those performed by a certain pop-star). No Moon-base. No Mars colony for another 10 years, at least.

It seems that we're woefully behind.

Perhaps if we'd 'pushed on' after Apollo 17 instead of 'pulling back', maybe we'd have landed people on Mars along with Opportunity and Spirit, or maybe with Curiosity last year.

There's no looking back, though. It's time to look forward again and it's time we took our record back!

In October of last year, the Canadian Space Agency rolled out a whole batch of prototype lunar and planetary rovers, including the SL-Commander, an all-terrain vehicle based on Bombardier's Can-Am Commander. That, right there, is the perfect vehicle to take out driving on the Moon or Mars, and with the speeds its capable of, we could win back the title from Opportunity in less than an hour!

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With any human mission to Mars set to take at least 10 years to happen, the fastest way for us to rack up more off-world driving time is to get back to the Moon. NASA's asteroid retrieval mission would certainly benefit from there being a lunar base by the time they get the asteroid back here, but since they're not going back to the Moon anytime soon, it's likely going to fall to other government or private space organizations to get the job done.

This might be a bit of a lofty goal. However, considering how many people signed up to be part of the Mars One colony in 2023, think of the response someone would get for planning to establish a lunar colony in the next five years, especially when going to the Moon wouldn't need to be a one-way trip. It would certainly help us catch up to the rovers, and it would put us on track to keep our new records intact as well.

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