---
id: "2025-12-08-claude-plans-perseverance-mars-drive"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-12-08-claude-plans-perseverance-mars-drive/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2025-12-08"
date_precision: day
category: milestone
importance: 3
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 1
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-27"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-12-08-claude-plans-perseverance-mars-drive/

# Claude plans a Perseverance rover drive on Mars with NASA JPL, billed as the first AI-planned drive on another planet

On Dec 8 and 10, 2025 (sols 1707 and 1709) NASA's Perseverance rover drove a roughly 400-metre route through a rock field whose waypoints had been planned by Claude, working in Claude Code with JPL engineers' rover-driving data and writing commands in JPL's Rover Markup Language. The plan passed JPL's usual simulation checks, engineers made only minor changes, and the rover completed the path. Anthropic presents it as "the first AI-planned drive on another planet"; JPL engineers estimate AI-assisted planning could halve route-planning time.

## Key facts
- Drives: Dec 8 and Dec 10, 2025 (Martian sols 1707 and 1709), about 400 m through a rock field (Anthropic feature page)
- Method (Anthropic): Claude analysed overhead imagery, built the path in 10-metre segments, revised its own waypoints and wrote the commands in Rover Markup Language; JPL fed years of rover-driving data and experience to Claude Code
- Checks: the plan went through JPL's simulation modelling more than 500,000 variables before upload; engineers only split one corridor more finely after looking at ground-level images
- Claimed benefit: engineers estimate AI-assisted planning could cut route-planning time in half; framed as a test for autonomy on Artemis lunar missions and future probes to Europa or Titan
- Publication date of Anthropic's page not shown on the page; the claim 'first AI-planned drive on another planet' is Anthropic's

## What happened

Rover drives are normally planned by JPL "rover planners" from orbital and ground images. For this test Claude did the planning
work end to end inside JPL's normal checks, and the rover executed the route.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): in its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): in its training data
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): in its training data
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): in its training data

## Sources

1. [Anthropic: Claude on Mars](https://www.anthropic.com/features/claude-on-mars) (anthropic.com, official)

## Changes

- 2026-10-27 (filed): Created from Anthropic's feature page