PASADENA, USA, Oct. 11, 2026 - NASA's Perseverance rover has surpassed the Opportunity rover's record for the greatest distance driven on another world.^[1][2] On 11 October it drove 91.31 metres,^[3] bringing its cumulative total on Mars to 45.22 km.^[4] That beats Opportunity's record of 28.06 miles, about 45.16 km.^[5] The milestone came on Perseverance's 2,006th Martian day, or sol,^[6] as the rover headed toward an area called Idubi.^[7] Its AutoNav self-driving system has powered 90 percent of the distance it has covered.^[8] Opportunity had held the record since 2018,^[9] and before that the Soviet Lunokhod-2 rover held the off-world distance record for more than 40 years.^[10] NASA has extended Perseverance's mission through the end of 2028.^[11] Impact Insight. Radio signals between Earth and Mars take several minutes each way, so a rover can't be steered live, and one that picks its own safe path covers far more ground. The link to planetary defense is indirect: the same kind of onboard autonomy helps spacecraft navigate around distant, poorly known bodies such as asteroids.