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Program archive
Planetary Rovers
From Lunokhod and Sojourner through Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance, planetary turned a single landing site into a traversable scientific field laboratory.
- Missions
- 5
- People
- 0
- Vehicles
- 5
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Choose a path through the Planetary Rovers archive.
Science that can move across another world
From Lunokhod and Sojourner through Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance, planetary turned a single landing site into a traversable scientific field laboratory.
Program details1970–presentSoviet and NASA robotic exploration · 1970–present
Flight record5 flights5 robotic or uncrewed
First flown missionLunokhod 1November 10, 1970
Latest flown missionOpportunityJuly 7, 2003
Core capabilities
Program story
Lunokhod 1 became the first remotely operated rover on another world in 1970, proving that a mobile laboratory could survive and work far beyond Earth. Lunokhod 2 extended the approach with a faster, longer traverse.
Sojourner became the first rover on Mars in 1997. Spirit and Opportunity then transformed expectations for robotic endurance, with Opportunity driving more than 45 kilometers over fourteen years.
Curiosity brought a large nuclear-powered laboratory to Gale crater, while Perseverance added advanced autonomy, astrobiology, and sample caching in Jezero crater. Each generation widened both the physical traverse and the scientific questions a rover could address.