I know you were being funny, but the actual details of the upgrade are interesting. The actual software was uploaded to Curiosity during the flight to Mars and has been stored in the rover. During the cruise to Mars both the flight software for the cruise stage and EDL were upgraded and the software in the rover. The code that's going to be executed is now being taken out of storage and made into the main program overwriting the EDL software that's no longer needed.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-168

I think the purpose was less a joke and more along the lines of an extended metaphor. I agree that it is very interesting. I was hoping for somebody to make just the comment you did. Thanks.

But the question was meant to really spawn a general discussion around software release in general in a deep space environment. So anybody know how the next upgrade would take place, assuming Curiosity needs one? Would it be staged on the Mars Orbiter first? Relayed a frame at a time? Do the concepts of CI apply in deep space deployments? Why or why not?

This is a very exciting story about repairing a software issue on the Mars Spirit rover in 2004:

http://web.archive.org/web/20110719212649/http://www.planeta...

Shorter wikipedia version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover#Sol_18_.28January_...