45.22 kilometres—and a new record on another world.
Perseverance’s odometer reached 28.10 miles (45.22 kilometres), moving just beyond Opportunity’s 28.06-mile (45.16-kilometre) record. It happened during a 299.6-foot (91.31-metre) drive through the Lac de Charmes region off Jezero Crater’s western rim.
Replay the dated route on Mars ↗A route measured over five and a half years
The globe opens NASA/JPL’s official route animation rather than redrawing an unverified path. The report does not publish the exact coordinate where the odometer crossed the record, so CaptureMars labels the endpoint regionally. It is not a live rover position.
How the Mars rovers compare
| Rover | Relative distance | Distance | Status of number |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perseverance | 45.22 km | As of Oct. 11, 2026 | |
| Opportunity | 45.16 km | Final mission total | |
| Curiosity | 38.07 km | As of Oct. 11, 2026 | |
| Spirit | 7.7 km | Final mission total | |
| Sojourner | 0.1 km | Final mission total |
Perseverance and Curiosity remain operational, so their values are dated snapshots—not live odometers. Opportunity’s 45.16 kilometres is its final total after a mission that ran from 2004 to 2018.
Why Perseverance covered ground faster
More than 90% of the rover’s total distance used AutoNav. Perseverance images terrain while moving, builds a three-dimensional hazard map, and plans a path between waypoints selected by rover planners on Earth. NASA/JPL says it can evaluate about 600,000 terrain points in each look, compared with 20 points for Sojourner.
That autonomy can support drives as long as 412 metres in one sol. The record is therefore also a milestone in robotic decision-making: more terrain can be reached while the rover still stops to investigate scientifically valuable rocks.
What the milestone does—and does not—say
NASA says the rover was moving toward an area called Idubi, where the science team hopes to find traces of ancient hydrothermal systems. That is a research goal, not a reported hydrothermal discovery. The record does not establish present-day water, life, habitability, settlement safety or human zoning.
Evidence boundary
The route and totals are historical through October 11, 2026. CaptureMars does not present them as current telemetry, and it does not place an invented point at the record crossing.