NASA's Perseverance rover completes first Mars drives planned by AI

NASA’s Perseverance rover has successfully completed the first Mars surface drives planned entirely by artificial intelligence, marking a significant advancement in autonomous space exploration. In early December, the rover followed routes generated by generative AI models, specifically vision-language models that analyzed rover imagery, terrain maps, and hazard data to create safe driving paths without human input. These AI-planned drives occurred on Mars sols 1,707 and 1,709, covering distances of 210 and 246 meters respectively, both executed safely and within operational limits. The project was led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with Anthropic, which provided the Claude AI models. Before sending commands to Mars, engineers rigorously tested the AI-generated instructions using a digital twin of Perseverance to ensure compatibility and safety, verifying over 500,000 telemetry variables. This cautious approach highlights the potential of AI to reduce the workload of rover operators and accelerate mission timelines, especially given the communication delays caused by the vast