It took 11 years and two months, but NASA's Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover did it: It traversed 26.22 miles (42.19 km) on Mars, effectively finishing the first marathon on the Red Planet.
"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 NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement.
The Opportunity rover, which landed on Mars in January 2004, is the older sister of Curiosity rover, which arrived on the planet eight years later, in August 2012. A third NASA Mars rover, Spirit, also arrived on the planet in January 2014, but has been inactive since 2010.
Though it holds a record for covering the longest distance on another world -- having surpassed former Soviet Union's Lunokhod moon rover last year -- Opportunity is not just blindly trudging on Mars' surface. The robot is exploring Mars for evidence of liquid water on the planet. Its adventures include exploring the Victoria and Endeavour craters and finding clues that Mars once had more favorable conditions for harboring microbial life.
Opportunity's next destination is the Marathon Valley, which might hold more clues to ancient wet environments on Mars.