NASA’s ever-young Mars rover Opportunity is up and about again, having survived another biting winter on the Red Planet.

Opportunity travelled around 3.5 metres on Tuesday, crawling downhill from the Greeley Haven outcrop, where it had been since it last moved at the end of December (NASA release).

“It feels good to be on the move again,” said Ashley Stroupe, one of the rover’s drivers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “We’re off the Greeley Haven outcrop, onto the sand just below it.”

During the winter, the rover cannot get enough energy from its solar power cells to move and work, so NASA kept it at Greeley inspecting the rocks there. This is the fifth Martian winter that Opportunity has made it through.

The researchers still need to keep the rover tilted towards the Sun, which sits low in the northern sky at the moment. With Opportunity now tilting at 8 degrees, its wranglers hope to be able to explore the north side of the Cape York part of the Endeavour Crater.

Image: Looking back at Greeley Haven/NASA/JPL-Caltech