NASA's Perseverance rover has set a new distance record for driving on another world. Its odometer read 45.22 kilometers (28.10 miles) on Sol 2006, which was October 11, 2026. No vehicle has driven farther on any celestial body other than Earth.
Vandi Verma, chief engineer for robotic operations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reported the milestone in a mission blog post. The record had belonged to the Opportunity rover, which covered about 45 kilometers on Mars before its mission ended in 2018.
Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater in February 2021. Much of its driving relies on onboard autonomous navigation, which lets it plan its own path over rough ground while it collects and caches rock samples for possible return to Earth.
