Mars rover trekker "Curiosity" has finally navigated automatically in the Martian land Tuesday, announced NASA.

Curiosity is manned by humans back here on Earth. On Tuesday, however, Curiosity was able to navigate independently through the use of the autonomous navigation or "auto navi" application. The "auto navi" application is also used in one other Martian land trekker, Opportunity, which has been on Mars since 2004.

Curiosity is reportedly more able to navigate autonomously compared to Opportunity due to its onboard computer. NBC News says that the computer onboard Curiosity is actually four times more capable in processing stereo data compared to Opportunity.

The "auto navi" application works by gathering information through Curiosity's cameras and then having the software determine the best possible route to take.

"Curiosity takes several sets of stereo pairs of images, and the rover's computer processes that information to map any geometric hazard or rough terrain," said Mark Maimone, rover mobility engineer and rover driver at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California in a report by NASA. "The rover considers all the paths it could take to get to the designated endpoint for the drive and chooses the best one."

Curiosity's autonomous drive last Tuesday was about 33 feet or roughly 10 meters. Curiosity was assigned a starting point and an end point but figured out how to get to the end point all by itself.

"We could see the area before the dip, and we told the rover where to drive on that part. We could see the ground on the other side, where we designated a point for the rover to end the drive, but Curiosity figured out for herself how to drive the uncharted part in between," said JPL's John Wright, a rover driver.

Launched in early 2013, Curiosity's mission is to head to the lower layers of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile tall mound in Mars. The rover will be stopping occasionally along the way, where drilling is deemed fruitful. Scientists and NASA are expecting evidences for the evolution of Mars and the Martian environment at Mount Sharp.

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