Although no one has ever stepped foot on Mars, humanity has nonetheless managed to carry out extensive explorations of the surface of Earth’s planetary neighbor through robotic rovers. One of these, NASA’s six-wheeled Perseverance rover, has now set a record for the greatest distance traveled by any vehicle on a world beyond Earth.
The American space agency announced that Perseverance, the size of a car, has covered 45.2 km since it arrived on Mars about five and a half years ago, surpassing the distance record previously held by another NASA rover, Opportunity, between 2004 and 2018. Both Perseverance and Opportunity have also surpassed the distances traveled by any rover that has operated on the Moon.
Perseverance, equipped with a suite of scientific instruments, has been seeking evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars — a planet that, long ago, was wetter and warmer than the cold, desolate place it is today — and has collected rock and soil samples for a possible return to Earth in the future.
Since landing on February 18, 2021, Perseverance has been traversing Jezero Crater and its surroundings, a region in the Martian northern hemisphere believed to have been flooded with water and housing a lake basin billions of years ago.
NASA said the rover reached this milestone on Sunday as it headed toward an area called Idubi, passing by the western edge of the crater, a region nicknamed Lake Charmes, where it is mapping some of the oldest terrains found in the solar system.
It is one of two NASA rovers currently traversing the Martian surface, with the Curiosity rover operating in Gale Crater near the Martian equator. Curiosity has already traveled 38.15 km since landing on Mars in 2012.
Steven Lee, the project manager for the two rovers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said Perseverance shows no signs of slowing down.
“The Perseverance engineering hardware and instruments are in excellent condition, with all redundant systems still available. A recent assessment of all systems concluded that they are capable of operating well into the 2030s, probably beyond that,” Lee told Reuters.
The Chinese Zhurong rover has also collected important scientific data on Mars, operating on the northern plains in 2021 and 2022.
