Perseverance rover breaks Mars driving distance record

NASA's Perseverance rover broke the Mars driving distance record on October 11, 2026. Its total distance reached 28.10 miles, just ahead of the 28.06 miles that the Opportunity rover covered. Opportunity set its record over nearly 15 years. Perseverance matched it in about five and a half years.

The key difference is how Perseverance drives. It uses a system called AutoNav, which scans the ground ahead and builds maps to avoid dangers. More than 90 percent of its journeys have required no instructions from human operators on Earth. On its best single day, it covered 331.74 metres without any human help.

Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater in 2021. Opportunity operated on Mars from 2004 until 2018.