This image shows NASA’s Perseverance rover’s route during the second of two drives that marked the first time AI has planned navigation on another planet. The magenta line depicts the route generated by Claude, while the orange line shows the path the rover actually took across Jezero Crater’s rim.
For 28 years, human “drivers” at JPL have manually plotted every metre of Mars rover travel, analysing terrain data and sketching waypoints no more than 100 metres apart to avoid hazards. This time, Claude analysed high-resolution orbital imagery from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, identified bedrock, boulder fields and sand ripples, then generated a continuous safe path. The rover drove 246 metres that day, with engineers verifying over 500,000 telemetry variables through a digital twin before sending commands across the 225 million kilometres to Mars.
Mars is just the beginning. When missions venture to Europa or Titan, where communication delays stretch to hours, AI won’t just plan the route. It will have to drive.