NASA Completes 'Brain Transplant' On Curiosity Rover

For the intermission, the 400-member science team will have the opportunity to pick a location for Curiosity to drive to before the arm-testing weeks, the JPL said.

"It's fair to say that the scientists, not to mention the rover drivers, are itching to move," said JPL's Ashwin Vasavada, deputy project scientist for Curiosity.

Scientists at the JPL uploaded the new software from Pasadena onto Curiosity, which had travelled 350 million miles to reach the Mars.

While the new software sat dormant, the spacecraft used flight software optimized to direct it through the Martian atmosphere and safely land on target in the Gale Crater on the Martian surface, according to the JPL.

Scientists said the newly uploaded software is optimised to drive the rover, operate the robotic arm and scoop up and analyse soil samples.

With that software successfully loaded, engineers are back to testing the rover's various operational and scientific instruments.

Scientists calculated that it would take several weeks to get Curiosity ready to work on Mars when it first landed and had hoped that the rover would drive by early September.

"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," said Watkins.