Hello, stargazers! There’s something about rovers that gets me right in the heart. They’re robots, sure, but we name them, we follow their tracks, and when one goes quiet, we grieve a little. Today, let’s ride along with every rover that has driven on Mars, from a tiny six-wheeler the size of a microwave to the car-sized labs rolling around right now. And yes, we’ll talk about that famous last message.
If you missed it, my earlier post on Mars in 2026: probes fly, Starship waits, and sample return hits a wall covers the bigger picture of Mars exploration this year. This one is all about the wheels.
Sojourner: The Little Rover That Could (1997)
NASA’s Mars Pathfinder bounced down on airbags on July 4, 1997, and out rolled Sojourner, the first wheeled rover on Mars. It was tiny, about 2 feet long, and it never strayed far from its lander. But it proved that a robot could drive on another planet, sniffing rocks with its spectrometer while the whole world watched online (a big deal in 1997!). Contact with Pathfinder was lost in late September 1997, after the mission had far outlived its planned lifetime.
Spirit and Opportunity: The Twins (2004)
In January 2004, NASA landed two identical golf-cart-sized rovers on opposite sides of Mars: Spirit in Gusev Crater and Opportunity at Meridiani Planum. Each was planned to last 90 sols (Martian days). Instead:
- Spirit explored for more than six years. It found strong evidence of past water, including silica deposits that hint at ancient hot springs. In 2009, it got stuck in soft soil, so NASA turned it into a stationary science station. Its last communication came in March 2010, and NASA formally ended the mission in May 2011.
- Opportunity became a legend. It drove about 28.06 miles (45.16 km) over almost 15 years, setting the off-world driving record, and found clear evidence that liquid water once soaked its landing site. In June 2018, a planet-wide dust storm blotted out the Sun. Opportunity’s last signal arrived on June 10, 2018, and NASA declared the mission complete on February 13, 2019, after more than a thousand recovery attempts.
“My Battery Is Low and It’s Getting Dark”
You’ve probably seen this line, and it still makes me tear up. But here’s the truth: Opportunity never “said” those words. In February 2019, science reporter Jacob Margolis tweeted a poetic paraphrase of what the rover’s final data showed: its power was dropping and the sky was getting dark from the dust. The line went viral, and many people took it as a literal quote. It wasn’t. It was a human translation of engineering telemetry. Honestly? I think that makes it even more beautiful. We cared enough to give a robot a voice.
Curiosity: The Mountain Climber (2012–Today)
Curiosity arrived on August 6, 2012 (UTC), via the famous “seven minutes of terror” sky-crane landing. It’s a car-sized nuclear-powered laboratory, and it’s still working after more than 14 years. It has shown that Gale Crater once held a lake that could have supported microbial life, it has found organic molecules in ancient rock, and it has spent years climbing Mount Sharp layer by layer, like reading the pages of Mars’ history book. In 2026, it has been drilling and analyzing samples in the mountain’s sulfate-rich layers.
Perseverance and Ingenuity: The Sample Collector and the Helicopter (2021–Today)
Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. Jezero is an ancient lakebed with a river delta, a prime place to search for signs of past life. Percy has been collecting rock cores in sealed tubes for a possible future return to Earth (sadly, that plan has hit a wall; see my Mars in 2026 post).
Big news from this fall: on October 11, 2026, NASA data showed Perseverance’s odometer at about 28.10 miles (45.22 km), just past Opportunity’s record. Percy did it in about five and a half years. Go, Percy!
Perseverance brought a friend: Ingenuity, a 4-pound helicopter. On April 19, 2021, it made the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. It was supposed to try five flights. It flew 72. In January 2024, a rotor blade was damaged during landing, and NASA ended the mission later that month. What a little legend.
China’s Zhurong (2021–2022)
China became the second country to operate a rover on Mars when Zhurong, part of the Tianwen-1 mission, landed in Utopia Planitia in May 2021. It drove about 1,921 meters (1.2 miles) studying the surface and subsurface. It went into planned hibernation on May 18, 2022, to ride out winter, but it never woke up. Chinese mission scientists said dust on its solar panels most likely left it without enough power. The Tianwen-1 orbiter is still working.
Who’s Still Driving? (as of November 1, 2026)
- Active: Curiosity and Perseverance (both NASA)
- Mission complete: Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Ingenuity
- Dormant since 2022: Zhurong
What’s Next: Rosalind Franklin and a Rover for Phobos
- ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover is scheduled to launch in late 2028. It will take the long way to Mars, about two years, so that it lands in northern spring with plenty of sunlight. Its superpower is a drill that reaches about 2 meters (6.5 feet) below the surface, where any traces of ancient life would be shielded from radiation. NASA is contributing the launch, the lander’s braking engines, and radioisotope heater units.
- IDEFIX, a small French-German rover, launched on October 20, 2026 (Japan time) aboard Japan’s MMX mission. It’s headed for Mars’ moon Phobos rather than Mars itself, but I couldn’t leave it out!
Why I Love Rovers
Every rover is a long-distance love letter: engineers on Earth driving a machine across another world, one careful command at a time. Two are still rolling, and more are coming. If you’ve got a favorite rover, tell me in the comments. Mine is a forever tie between Opportunity and Ingenuity. 💫
— The Star Queen
Sources
- NASA, Mars Pathfinder mission: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-pathfinder/
- NASA, Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mer-spirit/ and https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mer-opportunity/
- Snopes, “Was a Mars Rover’s Final Message ‘My Battery Is Low and It’s Getting Dark’?”: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/opportunity-rovers-final-words/
- LAist, how the Opportunity tweet went viral: https://laist.com/news/jpl-mars-rover-opportunity-battery-is-low-and-its-getting-dark
- NASA, Curiosity mission: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity/
- NASA, Perseverance mission: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/
- NASA, “Comparing Off-World Rover Driving Distances” (Oct 14, 2026): https://science.nasa.gov/resource/comparing-off-world-rover-driving-distances/
- NASA, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/ingenuity-mars-helicopter/
- Space.com, Mars rovers guide: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/missions/mars-rovers
- Mars Progress, Tianwen-1 and Zhurong: https://marsprogress.com/missions/tianwen-1/
- ESA, ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Mission: https://explorationscience.esa.int/project/exomars-rosalind-franklin-rfm/
- JAXA, MMX launch result (Oct 20, 2026): https://global.jaxa.jp/press/2026/10/20261020-1_e.html
- DLR, MMX and IDEFIX: https://www.dlr.de/en/research-and-transfer/projects-and-missions/mmx
Banner image: Jezero Crater seen by NASA’s Perseverance rover on sol 44 (2021), with the Ingenuity helicopter on the ground. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech, public domain.
