NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover just broke the record for the farthest distance traveled by any vehicle on another world, the space agency announced. The six-wheeled, nuclear-powered buggy has now traveled 28.10 miles (45.22 km) as of Oct. 11, besting NASA’s Opportunity rover, which rolled 28.06 miles (45.16 km) across the red planet’s surface. Persistent assets caught on in just five and a half years, compared to almost 15 for the serious opportunity.
Last we checked in with Perseverance, it was officially a marathon finisher with 26.2 miles under its pock-marked metal wheels. While the 28.1 miles it’s covered so far may not seem like much, it’s pretty good considering the vehicle’s top speed is a glacial 0.1 mph. It’s also impressive considering the challenging terrain it’s tasked with transiting, as shown by NASA in the video below.
The 2,260-pound rover reached the milestone and is traveling to a region called Idubi, where it is investigating a feature called “Lac de Charmes” containing some of the oldest terrain ever explored in our solar system. “The rocks and terrain of Lac de Charmes are so old that their terrestrial equivalents have long since been removed by erosion and plate tectonics (Mars does not have tectonic plates), and Idubi is where the science team hopes to find traces of ancient hydrothermal systems,” NASA explained.
Its longevity can be attributed in part to intelligent navigation decisions powered by its autonomous AutoNav system. With it, the rover can image terrain and find hazards in real time while automatically navigating between waypoints chosen by its planners. By processing 600,000 measurement points with each glance, it was able to travel more than 90 percent of its total distance autonomously.
Thanks to a recent software update, Perseverance can now roll more and steer less to save wear on parts, while controlling its own position against orbiting cards in the middle of the drive. Next, the team wants to overcome camera glare problems from sunlight that hinder its vision, so the rover can work for more days.
Endurance may have outgrown the opportunity, but the Curiosity rover is also exploring Mars and has traveled 38.15 km (23.7 miles) to date. The next most traveled US vehicles are the manned rovers of the Apollo 16, 17 and 18 missions – of which the Apollo 17 rover went the furthest at 35.74 km (22.21 miles).