Similar to driving Los Angeles freeways during rush hour, the Mars Curiosity Rover took two years to travel about 5.6 miles, or 9 kilometers -- but, it's finally reached its next destination, the Red Planet's Mount Sharp.

Roughly the size of Mount-Rainier in Washington state, Sharp stands at the center of the huge Gale Crater, where the robotic lab first landed back in 2012 and thereafter found evidence the crater floor was an apparent lakebed billions of years ago, explained a news release from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

"Curiosity now will begin a new chapter from an already outstanding introduction to the world," Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said in a statement. "After a historic and innovative landing along with its successful science discoveries, the scientific sequel is upon us."

Curiosity's long-anticipated journey up the mountain will start with an examination of the mountain's lower slopes, the rover beginning its ascent through an entry point near an outcrop called Pahrump Hills, lying along a boundary where the mountain's southern base layer meets crater-floor deposits washed down from the crater's northern rim.

Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger, who works from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, noted "the nature of the terrain at Pahrump Hills and just beyond it is a better place" than alternative entry locations, since "the exposures at the contact are better due to greater topographic relief."

Curiosity is currently positioned at the base of Mount Sharp, along a pale, distinctive geological feature called the Murray Formation, which is softer than nearby crater-floor terrain and tends not to retain impact scars.

Observations from NASA orbiters above have confirmed, as anticipated, that the formation "is not as well-layered as other units at the base of Mount Sharp," the release said.

Curiosity arrived at its current location after its route was modified earlier this year in response to excessive wheel wear.

In late 2013, the mission's team realized a region of Martian terrain with sharp, embedded rocks had poked holes in four of the rover's six wheels, speeding up the rate of wear and tear beyond what designers had originally planned.

So, Curiosity was re-routed through milder terrain that led the rover farther south, toward the base of the mountain.

"The wheels issue contributed to taking the rover farther south sooner than planned, but it is not a factor in the science-driven decision to start ascending," said Jennifer Trosper, Curiosity Deputy Project Manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena.

"We have been driving hard for many months to reach the entry point to Mount Sharp," Trosper said. "Now that we've made it, we'll be adjusting the operations style from a priority on driving to a priority on conducting the investigations needed at each layer of the mountain."