NASA · Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Perseverance passes Opportunity’s driving record on Mars
The File desk · Oct 14, 2026, 10:57 AM UTC
Status
Confirmed as NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory account, dated Oct. 12, 2026. The odometer reading is the lab’s.
NASA said its Perseverance rover has driven farther on another world than any vehicle before it. On Oct. 11 the odometer hit 28.10 miles, or 45.22 kilometers, passing the 28.06 miles, or 45.16 kilometers, that Opportunity drove on Mars between 2004 and 2018. Perseverance reached the mark on its 2,006th Martian day. A drive of 299.6 feet that day, about 91 meters, put it over the line. The lab says more than 90 percent of the distance was driven with the rover choosing its own path between points picked on Earth.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory post is dated Oct. 12, 2026. Perseverance landed in 2021. The lab says it covered, in five and a half years, a distance that took Opportunity almost 15 years.
The system is called AutoNav. While the rover rolls, it photographs the ground, builds a three-dimensional map of hazards, and plots a course between waypoints the team on Earth has chosen. The lab calls that “thinking while driving.” It says Perseverance can cover as much as 1,351 feet, or 412 meters, in a single Martian day. More than 90 percent of its total distance used AutoNav. Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, used the first Martian version of that system for about 5 percent of their driving.
A navigation camera shot from Oct. 11 marks the day a 299.6-foot drive, 91.31 meters, pushed the total past Opportunity.
For scale, the same post says Sojourner covered about 330 feet in 1997. Spirit logged 4.8 miles, or 7.7 kilometers, before it stopped in 2010. Opportunity rolled for 5,111 Martian days. Curiosity, still working in Gale Crater, has logged more than 23.65 miles, or 38.07 kilometers, as of Oct. 11. Those figures are the lab’s.
The post also says Perseverance has passed two lunar marks: 22.2 miles driven by the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972, and 24.2 miles driven by the Soviet Lunokhod 2 rover in 1973.
NASA recently approved the mission’s first extension. It began in October and runs Perseverance’s work on the crater rim through roughly the end of 2028.
What is still unknown or disputed
- An independent odometer check. The distances are NASA’s.
- Whether the extension changes the daily driving plan. The post says the extension was approved and does not give a new mileage target.
Primary sources
Every claim in this story is drawn from the documents below. If a fetch failed, that is recorded on the card.
Source 1
NASA’s Perseverance Sets Off-World Record for Total Distance Driven
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory · October 12, 2026
On Oct. 11, the rover’s odometer reached 28.10 miles (45.22 kilometers), eclipsing Opportunity’s 28.06 miles (45.16 kilometers). The mark came on the 2,006th Martian day. A 299.6-foot drive that day pushed it past the record.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-perseverance-sets-off-world-record-for-total-distance-driven/