Overview
- Perseverance's odometer reached 45.22 kilometers on 11 October 2026 after a 91.31‑meter drive, making it the vehicle with the greatest cumulative driving distance on any extraterrestrial body.
- NASA says more than 90 percent of Perseverance's distance was driven using AutoNav, the rover's autonomy software that builds 3D hazard maps from camera images and chooses safe paths between Earth‑set waypoints.
- Mars Global Localization, deployed in February 2026, gives the rover roughly 25 centimeters of self‑positioning accuracy and lets Perseverance complete longer autonomous traverses without frequent updates from Earth.
- Mission managers began a mission extension in October 2026 to continue crater‑rim exploration through about the end of 2028 and report that mobility systems remain functional after favorable life‑extension tests.
- The extra range is widening science access to sites such as Lac de Charmes and Idubi and has helped the team collect dozens of samples, with autonomy expected to both speed fieldwork and allow Perseverance to extend the record further.