When Curiosity first landed, scientists calculated that it would take several weeks to get the rover ready to roll; they hope to have it driving by early September.

Watkins noted that today was a hectic one for the programming team, which daily sends up new software commands to the rover. Until now, however, they have been able to use pre-coded commands.

"Today, they're building their code from scratch," said Watkins. "The first few days after landing, they had a pretty solid script. All that was on board and they activated it with small changes. Now, we're assembling all this from scratch on the ground."

He added that NASA is going with a light schedule of commands for the rover during the next few days to get the team practiced.

Ashwin Vasavada, a deputy project scientist at JPL, said during a news conference Tuesday afternoon that Curiosity is scheduled to begin taking its first 24-hour weather reading this week.