NASA's Perseverance sets record for driving on another world

NASA’s Perseverance rover has now driven farther than any other vehicle on the surface of any world beyond Earth, covering 28.1 miles (45.2 kilometres) since it landed on Mars in 2021, the US space agency said on Tuesday.

The car-sized, six-wheeled rover reached the milestone five and a half years into its mission to find out whether conditions suitable for microbial life ever existed on Mars, Geo News reported, citing Reuters.

Beating Opportunity

Perseverance passed the previous record of 28.06 miles (45 kilometres), set by NASA’s Opportunity rover between 2004 and 2018. Both rovers have also driven farther than any rover on the Moon.

The record was set on a journey towards an area called Idubi, through a region off the western rim of Jezero Crater nicknamed Lac de Charmes. The rover’s original mission planned for just 12.4 miles (20 kilometres) of driving, and NASA recently extended its mission to explore the crater rim until about the end of 2028.

Built to last

“Perseverance’s engineering hardware and instruments are in excellent shape with all redundant systems still available,” said Steven Lee of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, project manager for both Perseverance and Curiosity.

“A recent assessment of all systems concluded that they are capable of operating well into the 2030s, likely beyond,” he said.

• Wheels and drive: the mobility system is being tested to show it can drive 100 kilometres or more, with hardware to be tested to the equivalent of 150 to 300 kilometres
• Power: the plutonium-based power system is performing as expected, with “many years of useful energy still available”

A rover that drives itself

NASA credits much of the rover’s success to AutoNav, its self-driving system. Lee said 90 percent of its drives are done autonomously, without human intervention.

“Perseverance takes stereo images of the terrain ahead, generates a 3D software map, and selects the safest path towards a drive goal,” he said. A fast co-processor called the Vision Compute Element lets it process images and run its driving software almost continuously, unlike earlier rovers that had to pause to “think” before each drive segment.

“Perseverance builds on the 29-year legacy of our past Mars rovers, Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity, each incorporating prior lessons and improving our ability to drive on another world,” Lee said.

Searching for signs of life

Perseverance is exploring Jezero Crater, in Mars’s northern hemisphere, which scientists believe was flooded with water and held a lake billions of years ago. Its companion rover, Curiosity, is exploring Gale Crater near the Martian equator.

Lee said the rover’s biggest achievement was almost certainly the discovery, announced last year, of a potential biosignature, a possible sign of ancient microbial life. It was found in reddish rock thought to have formed 3.2 to 3.8 billion years ago in a river channel that fed the lake.

The crater rim may also hold clues to how large meteorite impacts shaped early Mars. Lee pointed to orbital evidence that some parts of the rim were once hydrothermal systems with warm or hot groundwater. “These areas may once have provided a warm, watery subsurface environment conducive to life,” he said. “Indeed, some paleontologists hypothesize that life on Earth began in such environments.”

Why it matters

Each kilometre Perseverance drives takes scientists closer to answering one of humanity’s oldest questions: are we alone? With its systems in good health, the rover could keep searching for years to come. Read our report on the Pakistani pilots training for China’s Tiangong space station.

This article draws on reporting by Geo News and Reuters.