NASA Uses Claude to Plan Route for the Perseverance Rover Anthropic's IPO prospectus, released Monday, highlighted a space case as a prime example of Claude Code's work: NASA tasked Claude with planning the rover's route. Due to the vast distance between Mars and Earth and significant signal delays, the rover couldn't be remotely controlled in real time. Previously, ground engineers would analyze photographs, mark points, and plan the route before sending it to the rover for autonomous driving. Last December, NASA entrusted this task to AI for the first time, allowing Claude to analyze Martian surface photographs and select a route traversing a rocky area. Engineers made only minor modifications after reviewing the route, and Perseverance subsequently followed it twice, covering approximately 210 meters and 246 meters respectively.