Mars rover to regain contact. Mars 2, Mars 3 were physically tethered probes; "Sojourner" was dependent on the Mars Pathfinder base station for communication with Earth; MER-A & B and "Curiosity" were on their own. Of these "Curiosity" is still active, and "Spirit", "Opportunity" and "Sojourner" completed their missions before losing contact. Seven rovers have been dispatched to Mars: "Examples Landed instrumentation" (Rovers) Mars rovers in development include: One experimental design, not proposed for any actual mission, is: NASA distinguishes between "mission" objectives and "science" objectives. Mission objectives are related to progress in space technology and development processes. Science objectives are met
Rover (space exploration) it landed on the Martian Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004 at 05:05 Ground UTC (about 13:15 local time), three weeks after its twin "Spirit" (MER-A) touched down on the other side of the planet. On July 28, 2014, NASA announced that "Opportunity", after having traveled over on the planet Mars, has set a new "off-world" record as the rover having driven the greatest distance, surpassing the previous record held by the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 rover that had traveled . () On 26 November 2011, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission was successfully launched for Mars. The mission successfully landed