How Fast Is a Mars Rover? Speed, Distance and Records
Mars rovers drive at about 0.15 km/h and rarely cover more than a few hundred metres a day. Here is why they are so slow and which rover holds the distance record.
If you could watch a Mars rover drive, you would be disappointed: it moves slower than a garden snail on a mission. Perseverance and Curiosity both have a top speed of roughly 0.15 km/h, about 4 cm per second.
Why so slow?
- No second chances. If a rover gets stuck or tips over, nobody can rescue it. Spirit got trapped in soft sand in 2009 and never moved again.
- Signal delay. Radio signals take between about 3 and 22 minutes to travel one way between Earth and Mars. Nobody can steer a rover live, like a remote-controlled car.
- Thinking takes time. On autonomous drives, the rover stops, takes pictures, builds a 3D map of the ground ahead and picks a safe path. Perseverance's newer computer lets it do much of this while it is still moving.
- Power and science. Driving shares the rover's limited energy and time with instruments, drilling and communication.
How far do they go?
| Rover | Landed | Distance driven |
|---|---|---|
| Sojourner | 1997 | about 100 m (always near the lander) |
| Spirit | 2004 | about 7.7 km |
| Opportunity | 2004 | about 45 km, the record |
| Curiosity | 2012 | more than 30 km, still driving |
| Perseverance | 2021 | more than 30 km, still driving |
Opportunity's record held for years, and the Soviet Lunokhod 2 rover drove about 39 km on the Moon in 1973, the record before that.
Driving faster in Trawers
In Trawers the rover drives at 9 km/h so that players can actually cover ground, but distances stay real. That means you can drive farther in an afternoon than Spirit did in its whole mission, and still need more than a year of real time to drive all the way around Mars.