Perseverance, a NASA Mars rover, has carved a new history. The explorer robot completed its first trip to Mars guided by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The technology is used to determine the direction point for Perseverance. In that way, the rover that landed on the Red Planet since 2021 can find challenging and dangerous terrain autonomously.
The exploration with AI was carried out last December. NASA said that the experiment provided satisfactory results to change the way they operate vehicles in space.
Previously, each travel route had to be manually planned by a team of technicians on Earth. The process is complicated and time consuming. However, now the challenge can be overcome thanks to Claude, an AI model from Anthropic, which is used by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
“Autonomous technologies like this can help missions operate more efficiently, respond to challenging terrain, and improve scientific results as they get farther from Earth,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said, quoted on Monday, February 2.
The use of AI has also successfully overcome communication problems. The distance of Mars which reaches millions of kilometers causes communication delays. This causes direct control or ‘joysticking’ cannot be done from Earth.
Thanks to AI, Perseverance can now ‘think’ more independently in deciding the safest path without having to wait for instructions. In a two-day trial, Perseverance managed to travel a total of more than 450 meters on the surface of Mars.
These results prove that AI is able to handle route planning accurately even in unfamiliar environments. With this effectiveness, NASA plans to use AI on helicopters, drones, to human landing infrastructure on the Moon.
Originally written by: Rana Maheswari Ummairah
Source: VOI
Published on: 2 February 2026
Link to original article: NASA’s Perseverance Spacecraft Completes First Mars Exploration Mission with AI
