But that journey of miles started with a roll of a few feet away from Bradbury Landing, where Curiosity set down on Aug. 6. NASA said on Wednesday that the spot had been named for Ray Bradbury, the author of “The Martian Chronicles” and other influential science-fiction novels, who died in June. He would have turned 92 on Wednesday.

Recently, Curiosity has been busy with other exercises, like vaporizing Martian rocks and seeing what they are made of (basalt, apparently, or something similar). On Sunday, the rover fired a laser instrument for the first time, hitting a rock with 30 bursts in 10 seconds and analyzing the atomic makeup from the resulting flashes of light.

On Monday, it flexed its arm. On Tuesday, it wiggled its four corner wheels in preparation for the drive.

“Everything has been going extremely well,” Mr. Theisinger said. “Really extremely well.”

Having succeeded at rock-zapping on Sunday, scientists turned the laser, which was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, to vaporize small bits at six more locations. So far, most of the rocks appear to be a type, common on Mars, that forms from the rapid cooling of lava.