One of NASA’s Mars rovers, Perseverance, has set a record for driving farther than any other vehicle has on the surface of another planet, as it continues on its mission to find signs of ancient microbial life.
The space agency said in a statement on Monday that on Oct. 11, Perseverance’s odometer hit 28.10 miles, beating the previous record of 28.06 set by NASA’s Opportunity rover, which explored the red planet from 2004 to 2018.
Perseverance was able to break that record in just five-and-a-half years—around a third of the time it took Opportunity to travel nearly as far—by covering as much as 1,351 feet in a single Martian day, or sol. …