Phil Stooke<p>These rover routes are all about 50 to 100 km long, a tall order given that nobody had ever driven a rover on Mars before. The only comparable missions were the Soviet Union's Lunokhods. Lunokhod 2 drove nearly 40 km in 5 months, so these Mars distances might have looked reasonable, but they don't take into account how we drive on Mars. Maybe they assumed automated hazard avoidance would allow long autonomous drives, but we are only just getting there now.</p><p><a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/mars" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>mars</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/marsrovers" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>marsrovers</span></a></p>