90 Days on Mars Turned Into 14 Years: 12 NASA Spacecraft That Outlasted Every Plan

When NASA launched Voyager 1 in September 1977, the twin Voyagers were built to last five years, long enough for a tour of Jupiter and Saturn. More than 49 years later, it is still sending data from interstellar space, which it entered in 2012.

On Nov. 18, 2026, it will be exactly one light-day from Earth, about 16.1 billion miles away, so a command sent from the ground will take a full day to arrive. To stretch its shrinking power supply, engineers switched off another instrument this April. Two science instruments are still running.

Ingenuity rode to Mars with the Perseverance rover as a technology test: up to five experimental flights over 30 days. On April 19, 2021, it made the first powered, controlled flight on another world.

Then it kept going. Ingenuity flew 72 times in almost three years, covering more than 14 times the distance it was planned for and spending more than two hours in the air in total. Its last flight was on Jan. 18, 2024.

The Hubble Space Telescope went up in April 1990, and NASA says it was originally designed to last 15 years. Astronauts visited it five times to repair and upgrade it, the last time in May 2009.

In April 2026 the telescope marked 36 years in orbit, and the team celebrated with a new view of the Trifid Nebula. By ESA’s count, Hubble has made more than 1.7 million observations.

When Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004, NASA designed it to work for 90 sols, or Martian days, about three months on Earth. It kept working until its last contact on June 10, 2018, more than 14 years later.

In that time it drove 28.06 miles, and in March 2015 it became the first machine to cover a marathon distance on another world. Its biggest find was evidence that ancient Mars once had liquid water.

Opportunity’s twin, Spirit, landed in Gusev crater three weeks earlier, also planned for a 90-day mission. It lasted six years, two months and 19 days and drove 4.8 miles.

When one of its front wheels stopped turning, the rover kept going and dragged the wheel behind it. In 2007 that wheel scraped away the topsoil and exposed a patch of nearly pure silica, a sign that ancient Mars was much wetter than it is today. The photo is a Martian sunset Spirit took in May 2005.

The first full-time crew arrived at the International Space Station on Nov. 2, 2000, and people have lived aboard without a break ever since. NASA marked 25 years of continuous human presence in 2025, and on Nov. 2, 2026, the streak reaches 26 years.

More than 290 people from 26 countries have visited, and astronauts have made more than 270 spacewalks there. The station is run together by five space agencies from the U.S., Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada.

2001 Mars Odyssey reached Mars on Oct. 24, 2001, and its project scientist said it was designed for a four-year mission. It became the longest-working spacecraft ever sent to Mars.

Odyssey relayed more than 90% of the data from the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and its camera has taken more than 1 million images. In October 2026 it passed 25 years in orbit, and NASA still lists it as an active part of its Mars relay network.

Kepler launched in March 2009 to watch about 100,000 stars for three and a half years and look for planets passing in front of them. In May 2013 it lost the second of its four reaction wheels, the parts that kept it pointed.

Instead of giving up, engineers balanced it against the gentle pressure of sunlight, which NASA compared to a kayak steering into the current. Kepler kept working for five more years and found more than 2,600 planets before NASA retired it in October 2018.

SOHO, a joint ESA and NASA observatory, launched in December 1995 on a two-year mission. About two and a half years in, it spun out of control and went silent, and a team spent three months finding and rescuing it.

It was never meant to hunt comets, but in March 2024 a citizen scientist spotted its 5,000th, making SOHO the most prolific comet discoverer in history. At its 30th anniversary in December 2025, ESA said it still sends high-quality data every day.

On July 21, 1969, the Apollo 11 crew set up a panel of 100 mirrors on the Moon. Observatories on Earth still fire lasers at it and time how long the light takes to bounce back, and JPL has called it the only lunar experiment running continuously since the Apollo era.

The panel needs no power and has no moving parts. Its measurements show that the Moon is drifting away from Earth by about 1.5 inches a year.

Curiosity landed in Gale crater in August 2012 for a two-year prime mission. It is still driving, and in August 2026 NASA said it had climbed a full kilometer, 3,280 feet, up Mount Sharp.

Along the way it found evidence of ancient environments where microbes could have lived and the largest organic molecules yet detected on Mars. The selfie in the photo is a mosaic of images the rover took of itself in 2018.

Voyager 2 launched first, on Aug. 20, 1977. It flew past Uranus in January 1986 and Neptune in August 1989, and NASA says it is still the only spacecraft to have visited either planet. It entered interstellar space in 2018.

This August engineers found a way to save a little more power, a swap the team nicknamed the “Big Bang,” and NASA said it should keep the three remaining science instruments running for at least another year. The photo shows Neptune as Voyager 2 saw it.