NASA’s Perseverance rover breaks record for off-planet driving on Mars

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Oct 12 (Reuters) NASA s robotic Perseverance rover has now driven farther than any other vehicle on the surface of any world other than Earth, racking up 28.1 miles (45.2 km) since arriving on Mars in 2021, the US space agency said on Tuesday. The car-sized, six-wheeled rover reached the milestone 5-1/2 years into its ​mission to explore if conditions conducive to microbial life ever existed on Earth s neighbor. In doing so, it is visiting ‌some of the most ancient terrain ever encountered in the solar system. Perseverance s engineering hardware and instruments are in excellent shape with all redundant systems still available, Steven Lee of NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told Reuters. A recent assessment of all systems concluded that they are capable of operating well into the 2030s, likely beyond, added Lee, the project manager for NASA s two Mars rovers, Perseverance and Curiosity. Perseverance has exceeded the previous figure of 28.