While no doubt an overgeneralization for a complicated piece of technology such as Curiosity, the avionics basically provide interfaces to instruments, radios, motors, and sensors. One of the biggest challenges engineers had to tackle, Donaldson said, involved "the scalability of existing design practices."

Translation: The Mars mission involves technology that is more complex than any other NASA has used.

How to Keep up with Curiosity

NASA has dedicated an entire section of its website to its Mars mission and really everything you'd want to know about it is .

Otherwise, PCWorld's Ian Paul has put together a thorough guide on how to track the Mars rover using a plethora of online tools. Check out .