NASA's Perseverance rover passes 45 km, a record for driving off Earth

Mixed · 2NASA said on 13 October 2026 that its Perseverance rover has driven farther than any other vehicle on the surface of any world other than Earth, covering 45.2 km (28.1 miles) since arriving on Mars in 2021. 1 2 Mixed · 2The car-sized, six-wheeled rover reached the milestone 5½ years into a mission to explore whether conditions conducive to microbial life ever existed on Mars, and is visiting some of the most ancient terrain ever encountered in the solar system. 1 2 Mixed · 2Perseverance passed the previous figure of 45 km set by NASA's Opportunity rover, which drove from 2004 to 2018. Both rovers have also exceeded the driving distances of any lunar rover. 2 1

Mixed · 2The milestone came on a journey toward an area called Idubi, through a region off the western rim of Jezero Crater nicknamed Lac de Charmes. Jezero, in Mars's northern hemisphere, is believed to have held a lake billions of years ago. The companion rover Curiosity is in Gale Crater near the Martian equator. 1 2 Centre · 1Steven Lee of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, project manager for Perseverance and Curiosity, said the rover's hardware and instruments are in excellent shape with all redundant systems still available. Lee said a recent assessment concluded the systems can operate well into the 2030s, likely beyond, and that the plutonium-based power system has "many years of useful energy still available". 1 Centre · 1Lee said the rover's mobility mechanisms are being tested to show it can drive 100 km or more, with hardware tested to the equivalent of 150 km to 300 km. The rover's original mission envisaged just 20 km of driving. 1

Centre · 1NASA attributed a major role in the success to AutoNav, the rover's autonomous navigation system, and Lee said 90% of drives are done with no human intervention. Perseverance takes stereo images, builds a 3D map and picks the safest path. A Vision Compute Element co-processor lets it process images almost continuously during drives, unlike earlier rovers that paused to "think" before each segment. 1 Right · 1The Straits Times copy of the Reuters report adds that Lee called the rover's biggest achievement almost certainly the 2025 discovery of a potential biosignature in reddish rock believed to be 3.2 to 3.8 billion years old, found in a river channel that fed the Jezero lake. It also says NASA recently approved extending the mission to explore the crater rim until roughly the end of 2028, and that Lac de Charmes terrain may yield clues about early planetary processes such as large meteorite impacts. 2