Mars's Marathon Valley Should Be Your Next Holiday Destination

Opportunity Pictures Vast Martian Valley

To celebrate the fact that Mars rover Opportunity is now back online and fully functioning, the robot has captured this stunning vista of Mars's Marathon Valley.

NASA's Mars Opportunity Rover is without a doubt the hardest-working robot in the solar system. It has been traversing the Martian landscape for an incredible 11 years and has so far only encountered one hiccup.

That hiccup was the corruption of one of Opportunity's flash memory banks. Well after three months of having its flash drives out of action the NASA team were able to send up a software update to the Rover which brings the remaining six flash drives back online again.

Whereas before Opportunity would need to send the day's data back to NASA before powering down, the rover can now store experimental data or even large image files before sending the completed experiment or image over in one go.

Opportunity has covered an incredible 26.192 miles pushing it ever closer to that Olympic Marathon.

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