Perseverance Breaks the Off-World Driving Record
NASA's Perseverance rover has driven farther than any vehicle on another world, the agency said Oct. 12.
Written on Oct. 16, 2026 from the source documents listed below, after the dates it covers.
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The story
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has now driven farther than any vehicle has on the surface of another world, NASA said on Oct. 12. On Oct. 11, the rover's odometer reached 28.10 miles (45.22 kilometers).
That beat the record of 28.06 miles (45.16 kilometers) set by NASA's Opportunity rover, which explored Mars from 2004 to 2018. Perseverance reached the mark on the 2,006th Martian day, or sol, of its mission, covering in five and a half years a distance that took Opportunity almost 15.
NASA says the rover has driven more than 90 percent of its total distance this way and can cover as much as 1,351 feet in a single sol.
Much of the credit goes to software. Perseverance's autonomous navigation system, AutoNav, images the terrain while the rover rolls, builds a 3D map of hazards and plots a path between waypoints chosen by planners on Earth.
NASA says the rover has driven more than 90 percent of its total distance this way and can cover as much as 1,351 feet in a single sol. The record came as Perseverance traveled toward an area called Idubi, in a region off the western rim of Jezero Crater that may hold some of the oldest terrain ever explored in the solar system.
The science team hopes to find traces of ancient hydrothermal systems there. The original mission called for no more than 12.4 miles of driving, said Steven Lee, project manager for the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
NASA recently approved the mission's first extension, which runs through roughly the end of 2028.
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Image and footage credits: Lead image: NASA/JPL-Caltech · NASA Images and Media Usage Guidelines (NASA content generally not subject to U.S. copyright) · NASA/JPL-Caltech · NASA Images and Media Usage Guidelines (NASA content generally not subject to U.S. copyright)
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