For five years, NASA’s Perseverance rover has been studying the river delta inside Mars’s Jezero Crater and beyond. Its goal is to better understand the Red Planet’s past and the possibility of life on it. The rover has found what is currently the most promising rock that might suggest that there was once life on Mars (but we don’t know that for sure, and bringing the samples home to study is a whole other issue). Today, though, we’re focusing on something different: its movements. The rover’s journey over the last five years has led it to not just new and incredible findings but a few travel records set on other worlds.
Perseverance is a masterpiece of engineering. It has not moved in the last month due to the position of Mars – currently behind the Sun – as this disrupts radio communication between Mars and Earth, making sending commands risky, but as of December 11, 2025, it has been driven 42.32 kilometers (26.3 miles). That’s more than a marathon!
A Record Broken And Another One Looms
There is only one land-based vehicle that has traveled longer on another world, and that is NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover. By the end of the mission, the rover had traveled a distance of 45.16 kilometers (28.06 miles). Perseverance is going to easily reach that, and based on past movements, it could very likely happen this year – but it will depend on what the mission scientists spot next and where they want to send the rover.
“It’s up to the science team to choose how the rover spends its time. If the goal were to drive several kilometers away quickly, we could accomplish that in a matter of weeks,” Mark Maimone, a long-time rover driver and mobility engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told IFLScience.
“But most likely we will be performing science assessments using the many sensors on the rover rather than just driving, so it will likely be a while before we match Opportunity’s record,” Maimone explained, adding, “I do want to note that Opportunity drove for nearly 15 years, whereas we are not yet at five years of operations, so we’re likely to surpass Opportunity’s record 3x faster than it did!”
In 2025, Perseverance broke the record for its longest drive when it covered 411.7 meters (1,350.7 feet) on June 19, or Sol 1540. One year into the mission, the rover drove 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) in 24 days during the “Perserverance Rapid Traverse Campaign”. The secret is in the rover’s capability to drive itself.
While NASA engineers plot a course for the rover each day and its scientific activities, once it starts driving, it is on its own and relies on its autonomous systems to navigate any unexpected obstacles along its path. Previous rovers could do this to a certain extent, but were unable to do so as far in advance as Perseverance. They would often have to slow down to a crawl in order to navigate around rocks, sand pits, and ledges.
The human rover planners still need to find the best and safest route for the rover to reach the scientific destination of relevance, while the autonomous navigation performs dozens of checks multiple times per second to make sure the rover stays safe.
The Road Ahead Might Not Be Smooth, But It Will Be Covered
Last summer, JPL certified that the rotary actuators, which are the bits that turn the rover’s wheels, will perform optimally for at least another 60 kilometers (37 miles). The rover can happily drive 100 kilometers (61 miles) in total. Now they are testing the brakes. But even if some issues were to emerge, they will be overcome and the rover will continue to do amazing science. On February 18, 2026, Perseverance will have been on Mars for five years.
