Two RoverA rover is a robot vehicle that drives across Mars, following plans its team on Earth sends ahead of each drive.More in the glossary are working on Mars right now: NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity. Six rovers have driven on Mars since 1997 (Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, Perseverance and China’s Zhurong) and all six are still there.
Both NASA rovers are driving and sending pictures home. A day on Mars is called a SolA sol is a day on Mars — 24 h 39 min 35 s, about 40 minutes longer than ours — and rovers count them from the day they land.More in the glossary, and each rover counts them from the day it landed.
SolA sol is a day on Mars — 24 h 39 min 35 s, about 40 minutes longer than ours — and rovers count them from the day they land.More in the glossary2,004since landing day
Local mean solar timeLocal mean solar time is the clock a rover team works by: the average time of day at the rover’s spot, ignoring the Sun’s seasonal drift.More in the glossary05:02Night
Driven
45.13 km (28.04 mi)by sol 1,980 · Sep 15, 2026
Built to last
1 Mars year (687 Earth days)3× its design life so far
SolA sol is a day on Mars — 24 h 39 min 35 s, about 40 minutes longer than ours — and rovers count them from the day they land.More in the glossary5,039since landing day
Local mean solar timeLocal mean solar time is the clock a rover team works by: the average time of day at the rover’s spot, ignoring the Sun’s seasonal drift.More in the glossary09:02Morning
Driven
more than 38 km (23.6 mi)by sol 5,021 · September 2026
Built to last
1 Mars year (687 Earth days)7.5× its design life so far
Now
On Mount Sharp; analyzing a sample drilled from “Basque Lakes”, its 48th drill target (Oct 5, 2026)
Pulled from NASA’s raw-image feeds on Oct 9, 2026, unprocessed, with NASA’s credits.All Mars photos
Where every rover landed
Each number marks a landing site. Even the farthest-driving rover has covered only about 45 km, too little to leave its dot on a map of the whole planet.
1234567
Map: Mars Progress, equirectangular, 180°W–180°E. Landing sites from NASA’s Mars24 landers list.
1SojournerAres Vallis · 19.47°N, 33.25°W · 1997Ended
AsleepWent into planned hibernation on May 18, 2022 and hasn’t woken.
Driven1,921 m (1.19 mi)by May 5, 2022, CNSA says
Worked347 solsBuilt for 90 sols · 3.9× its design life · by May 5, 2022
Landing dates are in UTC, so Spirit’s and Opportunity’s are a day later than the US dates NASA often gives. Miles and feet are converted from NASA’s and CNSA’s metric figures. Sol counts follow each mission’s own convention: Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity called landing day sol 1; Curiosity and Perseverance call it sol 0.
Ended
The helicopter: Ingenuity
NASA’s Ingenuity rode to Mars under Perseverance and made the first powered flight on another planet on . Its last flight was on : landing over smooth, featureless sand, it lost track of the ground and came down hard, breaking all four rotor blades.
Overhead: six working OrbiterAn orbiter circles Mars without landing, studying the planet from above — and many also relay rover data back to Earth.More in the glossary
Rovers send most of their data home through spacecraft circling Mars. These are working now.
Two are working: NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity. Six rovers have driven on Mars in all, and every one of them is still there. The others have stopped or gone quiet.
What was the first rover on Mars?
Sojourner, the first rover to drive on Mars, part of NASA’s Mars Pathfinder mission. It landed in Ares Vallis on Jul 4, 1997, drove about 100 m (330 ft) around its lander, and sent its last data on Sep 27, 1997. A Soviet lander carried a small rover to Mars in 1971, but it never moved.
What are the names of the Mars rovers?
Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance from NASA, and Zhurong from China. Europe’s Rosalind Franklin is the next one planned.
Which rover has driven the farthest?
Opportunity: 45.16 km (28.06 mi). Perseverance had driven 45.13 km (28.04 mi) by sol 1,980, in September 2026, about 34 m behind, by NASA’s map data. NASA hasn’t announced a new record.
Is China’s Zhurong rover still working?
Not as far as anyone knows. Zhurong went into planned hibernation on May 18, 2022, expecting to wake that December, and hasn’t been heard from since. In April 2023 Zhang Rongqiao, chief designer of China’s Mars exploration program, said dust building up on it was the likely reason. China hasn’t formally ended the mission, so we call it asleep.
What time is it where the rovers are?
05:02 at Jezero Crater and 09:02 at Gale Crater, by each mission’s own clock. A day on Mars lasts 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds.
Is the Mars helicopter still flying?
No. Ingenuity’s last flight, its 72nd, was on Jan 18, 2024. A hard landing broke its rotor blades, and NASA ended the mission on Jan 25, 2024.
Did the Soviet Union land a rover on Mars?
It tried. The Soviet Mars 3 lander touched down on Dec 2, 1971 carrying a small rover on skis, but the lander fell silent about 20 seconds after it began sending data, so the rover never moved.
