NASA says Perseverance’s odometer reached 28.10 miles on October 11, just beyond Opportunity’s 28.06-mile off-world driving record. The margin is only 0.04 mile. The more interesting number is time: Perseverance covered the distance in about five and a half years, on its 2,006th Martian day; Opportunity took almost 15 years.
More than 90% of Perseverance’s route has used AutoNav, compared with about 5% for Opportunity and Spirit. The newer rover can evaluate roughly 600,000 terrain points in a look, build a hazard map while rolling and travel as far as 1,351 feet in one sol. The autonomy is not there to win a mileage contest. It lets the mission cross more geological units per year.
That matters now because Perseverance is traveling outside Jezero Crater’s western rim, across Lac de Charmes toward Idubi, where the science team hopes to find evidence of ancient hydrothermal systems. NASA has approved an extension through roughly the end of 2028.
NASA Science — “NASA’s Perseverance Sets Off-World Record for Total Distance Driven,” October 12