NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, built and operated by Caltech-managed Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, has broken the record for the greatest distance traveled by a vehicle on another world, NASA announced Monday.<\/p>\n
The six-wheeled rover reached 28.10 miles Sunday, surpassing the previous record of 28.06 miles set by NASA’s Opportunity rover, which explored Mars from 2004 to 2018, according to the space agency.<\/p>\n
Perseverance achieved the milestone on the 2,006th Martian day, or sol, of its mission, covering in about 5 1\/2 years a distance that took Opportunity nearly 15 years to complete.<\/p>\n
The rover landed on Mars in February 2021 and has been exploring Jezero Crater, searching for evidence of ancient microbial life and collecting rock and soil samples.<\/p>\n
“It is an honor to be working on Perseverance at a moment when the technology has evolved to the point that drives like these are routine,” said Steven Lee, project manager of the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers at JPL. “The original mission called for no more than 12.4 miles of driving. We’ve blown well past that, and with all mobility systems fully operational and favorable extended-ground-life test results, we expect Perseverance to keep adding to this record for many years to come.”<\/p>\n
Much of the rover’s increased driving capability comes from its autonomous navigation system, known as AutoNav, which allows Perseverance to identify hazards and determine routes without requiring constant direction from controllers on Earth, according to NASA.<\/p>\n
The system uses cameras to create three-dimensional maps of the surrounding terrain and plot paths between destinations selected by rover planners.<\/p>\n
Perseverance has used AutoNav to assess terrain during more than 90% of its total driving distance, compared with about 5% for the earlier navigation system used by Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, officials said.<\/p>\n
The technology allows Perseverance to travel as far as 1,351 feet in a single Martian day.<\/p>\n
“The rover that broke this record did so by making its own decisions about the path. Given the autonomy to just go, Perseverance is a better driver than the one that landed, and we’re not done,” said Mark Maimone, deputy team chief for robotic operations on Perseverance.<\/p>\n
Perseverance broke the record while traveling toward an area called Idubi through a region beyond the western rim of Jezero Crater known as Lac de Charmes.<\/p>\n
Scientists believe the region contains some of the oldest terrain yet explored by robotic missions and hope to find evidence of ancient hydrothermal systems, which could provide clues about conditions that may once have supported life on Mars.<\/p>\n
The rover has collected 29 rock and soil samples from the crater floor, an ancient river delta and the crater rim, including rocks believed to be about 4 billion years old.<\/p>\n
Its discoveries include a rock called “Cheyava Falls,” which contains a potential biosignature, a feature that could indicate past microbial activity but does not establish that life existed on Mars.<\/p>\n
NASA recently approved the first extension of Perseverance’s mission, which began in October and is expected to continue exploration of the crater rim through approximately the end of 2028.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, built and operated by Caltech-managed Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, has broken the record…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49,3098],"class_list":["post-494271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-nasa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}