Here’s the latest report from the NASA Mars Science Laboratory Project on the progress of the Curiosity Mars rover. So very cool that we have a remotely controllable vehicle roaming the Martian surface. Sometimes I forget.

The team operating NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has completed a software upgrade on the vehicle and is next planning a check of wear and tear on the rover’s wheels.

“Curiosity is now operating on version 11 of its flight software,” said Jim Erickson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, project manager for the NASA Mars Science Laboratory Project, which operates Curiosity.

This is the third upgrade version since Curiosity’s landing on Mars16 months ago. Completing the switch from version 10 took about a week. An earlier switch to version 11 prompted an unintended reboot on Nov. 7 and a return to version 10, but the latest transition went smoothly.

Think about the complexity of that problem. Imagine sending your iPhone or Mac to Mars, then trying to install a new operating system, strictly hands off, and hampered by a relatively low-bandwidth data connection. The fact that we have updated the flight software at least 10 times (to get to version 11) and still have a working vehicle is an astounding achievement.

On a related note, the NASA Mars team recently instructed Curiosity to take this selfie of one of its tires, to get a sense of the wear on the tires as Curiosity makes its way over some pretty rocky terrain. Take a look. Those are some pretty bad-ass tires.