The key facts
- Perseverance has traveled 45.22 km on Mars, setting a new record for distance traveled on another planet's surface.
- The rover surpassed Opportunity's previous record of 45.16 km and overtook Curiosity, the Lunokhods, the Apollo rovers, and China's Yutu rovers.
- Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater in February 2021 to search for ancient microbial life and collect samples for delivery to Earth.
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that its Perseverance Mars rover, as of October 11, 2026, had traveled 45.22 km across Mars, setting a new record for the total distance traveled on the surface of another planet. .
This result allowed the rover to surpass the previous record (45.16 km) set by NASA's Opportunity Mars rover during its activity on Mars from 2004 to 2018.
According to NASA data, Perseverance has overtaken, in terms of distance traveled, NASA's Curiosity (on Mars since 2012, having traveled 38.15 km to date), the Spirit and Sojourner rovers, the Soviet Union's Lunokhod-1 and Lunokhod-2 vehicles, NASA's Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 lunar rovers, as well as China's Yutu and Yutu-2 rovers.
The six-wheeled Perseverance Mars rover was launched into space on July 30, 2020. On February 18, 2021, the vehicle reached the surface of Mars and landed in Jezero Crater, where, according to scientists, a lake fed by rivers existed more than 3.5 billion years ago. The goal of the Perseverance mission is to find traces of ancient microbial life. To this end, the rover is collecting samples of Martian rocks and soil for later delivery to Earth.
Steven Lee, project manager for Perseverance and Curiosity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that Perseverance is in excellent technical condition and could remain operational on Mars into the 2030s or even beyond.
