By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-10-13 22:31:53 | Updated at 2026-10-14 00:50:29
2 hours ago
One of NASA’s Mars rovers, Perseverance, has set a record for driving farther than any other vehicle has on the surface of another planet, as it continues on its mission to find signs of ancient microbial life.
The space agency said in a statement on Monday that on Oct. 11, Perseverance’s odometer hit 28.10 miles, beating the previous record of 28.06 set by NASA’s Opportunity rover, which explored the red planet from 2004 to 2018.
Perseverance was able to break that record in just five-and-a-half years—around a third of the time it took Opportunity to travel nearly as far—by covering as much as 1,351 feet in a single Martian day, or sol.
Both Perseverance and Opportunity also beat the driving distances of any rover that operated on the moon.
NASA said that much of the reason why Perseverance was able to cover that much ground in that period of time was due to the vehicle’s self-driving capability, where its autonomous navigation system is able to image the terrain while it is on the move, build a three-dimensional map of hazards, and route a safe course of travel accordingly.
Steven Lee, project manager of the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said the original mission had called for no more than 12.4 miles of driving.
“We’ve blown well past that, and with all mobility systems fully operational and favorable extended-ground-life test results, we expect Perseverance to keep adding to this record for many years to come,” Lee said.
Search for Ancient Microbial Life
Perseverance is a six-wheeled rover the size of a car. Launched on July 30, 2020, it landed on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021, and began its mission to find signs of ancient microbial life by collecting rocks and soil samples.
At one time, Mars was wetter and warmer than the cold and desolate planet it is today. Since it landed, Perseverance has driven in and around Jezero Crater, an area in the red planet’s northern hemisphere believed to have been flooded with water, and home to a lake basin billions of years ago.
Perseverance had hit its milestone while driving toward an area called Idubi, through the region off the western rim of the Jezero Crater, nicknamed “Lac de Charmes.”
NASA says that the rocks and terrain of Lac de Charmes are so ancient that their equivalents on Earth have long since been erased by the movement of plate tectonics—which Mars does not have—and erosion. Scientists also hope that the samples collected at Idubi will contain evidence of ancient hydrothermal systems.
Curiosity Rover
Perseverance is not the only NASA rover currently driving around the surface of Mars. Curiosity is currently operating in the Gale Crater near the planet’s equator. Since landing in 2012, it has traveled 23.71 miles.
Lee told Reuters that Perseverance is showing no signs of slowing down.
“Perseverance’s engineering hardware and instruments are in excellent shape with all redundant systems still available. A recent assessment of all systems concluded that they are capable of operating well into the 2030s, likely beyond,” Lee said.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie, made up of 62 individual images, on July 23. A rock nicknamed “Cheyava Falls,” which has features that may bear on the question of whether the Red Planet was long ago home to microscopic life, is to the left of the rover near the center of the image. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS).
Recently, NASA approved an extension of Perseverance’s mission to explore the rim of Jezero Crater until around the end of 2028.
“There is evidence from orbital measurements that some areas of the rim were once hydrothermal systems with warm or hot groundwater,” Lee said. “These areas may once have provided a warm, watery subsurface environment conducive to life. Indeed, some paleontologists hypothesize that life on Earth began in such environments.”
NASA announced on Sept. 10, 2025, that after a year of peer-reviewed research, a rock sample from Mars contained evidence that microbial life could have existed on the planet.
The sample was collected by Perseverance in July 2024 and came from a reddish rock believed to have formed 3.2 billion to 3.8 billion years ago, found as the rover explored Jezero Crater’s ancient riverbed.
Reuters contributed to this report.
