Post

Paul Byrne
@theplanetaryguy.com

Yesterday, NASA broke a record. The longest distance travelled by a vehicle on the surface of a world other than Earth. The Perseverance rover has now driven 45.22 km, beating the previous record of 45.16 km by the Opportunity rover. Perseverance did the distance in 5.5 years to Oppy's 15.

133 reposts580 likes

Paul Byrne
@theplanetaryguy.com

This scene is a composite of two Perseverance Left Navigation Camera (Navcam) images taken 11 October 2026 at a local Jezero Crater time of 2:40 pm. This milestone was reached on Sol 2,006 of the rover's mission. Read more: science.nasa.gov/blogs/persev... Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Paul Byrne

Bruce Macintosh
@bmacastro.bsky.social

This prompted me to wonder how long it will take Dragonfly to break this record flying over the surface of Titan. It looks like Dragonfly is 175 km over 3 years, so sometime in the first year of the message it'll become the record-holder!

Dr. Fred J. Calef III
@mapperwocky.bsky.social

That’s a different record. The flight record on another planet is currently held by Ingenuity at ~18.14 km (11.27 mi). Dragonfly should break that record easily, if those flight metrics add up.

Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey
@beamjockey.bsky.social

The first aircraft to fly on a celestial body, the Vega 1 Balloon, still holds the distance record, flying 11600 kilometers before going dark on 13 June 1985. Second place belongs to its sister Vega 2 Balloon, whose traverse covered 11100 km. These records will be tough for Dragonfly to beat. 🎈🎈 🔭

tsjackson.bsky.social
@tsjackson.bsky.social

Google's AI Overview reckons that Curiosity has travelled 38.07 km so far, which would seem to imply that the older rover won't ever hold the distance-travelled-on-Mars record. Unless of course...