The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Perseverance rover successfully completed its first artificial intelligence (AI)-driven flight on another planet.
Perseverance used an AI model, Claude, developed by Anthropic, to design a safe 400-meter route through the rocky terrain of Jezero Carter. The plan was executed on December 8 and 10, 2025.
Previously, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) performed this manually.
As Mars is on average 230 million kilometers from Earth, this creates a communication delay of about 20 minutes, making it unable to pilot rovers in real time.
Instead, operators meticulously plan a series of waypoints, also called “breadcrumbs,” using orbital images and data from the rover, which the rover then follows autonomously between points.
For this test, engineers gave Claude years of mission data in context.
The AI system analyzed high-resolution orbital images, detected hazards such as rock fields and sand ripples, and produced a continuous trajectory.
It even produced the commands in the rover’s specialized programming language.
Before application, JPL engineers verified it through a standard verification simulation, checking more than 500,000 variables.
Minor adjustment was required after testing. As a result, Perseverance traveled 689 feet and then 807 feet over the two sols (Marian days), completing the AI’s planned route without issue.
