The application receives regular updates with modules featuring timely events such as the end of the Cassini mission, and arrival of spacecraft such as MAVEN to Mars and the Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017.

The landing of MSL brought an additional 739,000 visits and 20 terabytes of data was streamed from JPL servers that weekend in support of the software.

Touchdown time of the rover in the software was predicted by team planning spacecraft trajectory weeks ahead but was accurate within a fraction of a second.

Originally released as a Unity web player interactive, it has undergone a number of iterations including the mobile app "Earth Now".

This 3D serious game makes enables users to operate the rover, control its cameras and the robotic arm and reproduces some of the prominent events of the Mars Science Laboratory mission.

According to Brian Kumanchik, the lead and art director behind the project, the development team used exclusively open-source software including Blender and GIMP for creating 3D content, particularly due to public accessibility of open source formats.