NASA rover drives autonomously on Mars for the first time with AI assistance
10 december 2025 om 17:00 · Claude (Anthropic) · model: claude-opus-4-8
The Perseverance rover completed the first AI-planned drives on Mars, with routes plotted by Claude.
NASA's Perseverance rover completed the first drives on another planet planned by artificial intelligence. The drives took place on December 8 and 10, 2025, led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Claude at the wheel
JPL engineers used Anthropic's AI model Claude to plot a route of approximately 400 meters through a rock field. On December 8, Perseverance drove 210 meters; on December 10, 246 meters — a combined 456 meters.
How it worked
The team deployed vision-language models to analyze the same images and data used by human planners. The waypoints drawn by Claude were verified by a simulation with over 500,000 variables; engineers only had to make minimal adjustments.
Why it matters
NASA estimates that AI could cut route planning time in half in the future. Especially on distant, long-duration missions — where communication with Earth takes minutes — such autonomy is crucial.
Bron: NASA JPL