Reading time 3 minutes
NASA’s Perseverance rover is living up to its name as its total distance traveled approaches the length of a marathon. Over the past five years, this intrepid explorer has traversed more than 26.05 miles (41.92 kilometers) of Martian terrain, and it’s now closing in on the distance record.
The current record-holder is NASA’s Opportunity rover, which traveled a total of 28.06 miles (45.16 km) over the course of its nearly 15-year mission. Perseverance has been exploring the Red Planet for a third of that time, and it’s already just 2 miles (3.2 km) from breaking Opportunity’s record.
“Having the benefit of four previous rover missions, the Perseverance team has always known our mission was a marathon and not a sprint,” Steve Lee, acting Perseverance project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in an agency statement. “Perseverance is in great shape as we continue our explorations and extend into ultramarathon drive distances.”
Perseverance landed in the Jezero Crater in February 2021 and spent the next three years exploring the interior of this 28-mile-wide (45-km-wide) impact zone. It took more than three months for the rover climb up the western wall of the crater, reaching its rim in December 2024.
