Opportunity's Eighth Anniversary
 

Opportunity landed on Mars on Jan. 25, 2004, Universal Time and EST (Jan. 24, PST). It has driven 21.4 miles (34.4 kilometers) as of its eighth anniversary on the planet. In late 2011, the rover team drove Opportunity up onto Greeley Haven to take advantage of the outcrop's sun-facing slope to boost output from the rover's dusty solar panels during the Martian winter.

Here is a recent picture from Opportunity

Congrats to all at NASA. You sure can build them :)

Re: Opportunity's Eighth Anniversary
 

Here's hoping Curiosity has an equally long and productive life. It's gotta land first though. :cool:

No speed demon though, Opportunity's average is 0.0003052 mi/hour or 0.0004476 ft/sec or 0.0053709 in/sec. That's about the thickness of aluminum foil per second. To be fair, it did spend a lot of time shivering in its tracks.

Re: Opportunity's Eighth Anniversary
 

If that's how quickly it moved, then that's way slower than I thought. Is that the average speed at which it moved when it was actually moving, or the average speed over the entire time the robot was on Mars?

Re: Opportunity's Eighth Anniversary
 

I just divided the distance traveled by the time it's been there. Here is the website's explanation of This when you've got somewhere to go AND the energy to do it. If you've stopped to smell the flowers, your average speed will decline, of course.