NASA's Perseverance rover has set a record for the farthest distance traveled by a vehicle on the surface of another planet. On October 11, its odometer read 28.10 miles, or 45.22 kilometers – slightly more than Opportunity, which traveled 28.16 miles (45.16 kilometers) on Mars between 2004 and 2018. Perseverance achieved the record roughly five and a half years after landing on the Red Planet.
The record was set on the 2006th Martian day of the mission. By comparison, Opportunity operated for almost 15 years before it was decommissioned. Its smaller predecessor, Sojourner, which became NASA's first rover on Mars in 1997, traveled about 100 meters in 83 Martian days. Spirit has traveled 7.7 kilometers, and Curiosity, which is also still operating, has traveled 38.07 kilometers.
The robot chooses the safe route on its own
Perseverance's greater achievement is not only due to speed. The rover can travel up to 412 meters in a Martian day, but the main difference comes from AutoNav - an autonomous navigation system that allows the robot to independently determine how to avoid obstacles.
Controllers on Earth set the final destination and several intermediate points, and AutoNav chooses the specific safe path. The system captures the terrain on the move, creates a three-dimensional map and assesses possible hazards. It processes about 600,000 measurement points with each scan. This allows Perseverance to spend more time moving and less time stopping and waiting for new directions.
About 90 percent of Perseverance's total distance has been covered using AutoNav. Spirit and Opportunity used an earlier version of the autonomous technology for about five percent of their journeys. Perseverance is currently moving through the Lac de Charmes region toward an area called Idubi, near the western rim of Jezero Crater. There, the team is looking for signs of ancient hydrothermal systems - places where hot water interacted with minerals in the rocks and could have created conditions for microbial life.
After Idubi, the rover is planned to head for Rainbow Falls - a block of Martian crust about 100 meters high, uplifted by the impact that formed Jezero Crater about four billion years ago. NASA has extended the mission until about the end of 2028, and engineering tests show that the main systems can operate until at least 2031.
The long range is important not only for the record. It allows Perseverance to reach a variety of geological environments - from ancient lake beds to fossilized river systems and the edge of a crater. During this trip, the rover examined the Cheyava Falls rock, in a sample of which NASA found a potential biosignature. This is a sign that may have a biological origin, but does not yet prove that life existed on Mars.
Sources: autoevolution.com