For the most part, we are Earthbound, we work-a-day humans who keep our noses to the ground, focusing on our daily tasks and sticking to what we know. But NASA has done us a service by giving us cause to look up once in a while and to remember what we all have in common.

It has launched a new Mars rover named Curiosity that will land on the dusty planet sometime this coming August. The rover will roam for almost two years in Earth time, just a year on the Mars calendar, testing rocks and atmospheric samples and sending information back piecemeal.

If all goes as planned, Curiosity will explore an area 96-miles in diameter known as Gale Crater. With its seven-foot arm, the rover will extract material and deposit it into its chambers for examination. Inside Curiosity are a number of instruments—a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer, a radiation detector, an X-ray diffraction instrument and a powerful camera. With its laser beam, the rover can vaporize material up to 23 feet away, and its instruments can analyze the atoms released in the process.

As it gathers and inspects, Curiosity will communicate with scientists by sending radio relays to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and transmitting through the Deep Space Network antennas. The findings will be applied to the rover’s mission—to search for conditions favorable for life and conditions capable of preserving a record of life.

I can read all about the mission of Curiosity and follow its progress, but to be honest, I don’t understand a word of how it will be gathering information. I can look up the meaning of the word “chromatograph,” but its definition is lost on me; and how in the world an un-manned machine on Mars can send and receive information to and from Earth is a mystery no matter how many times I hear the explanation.

I’m afraid I need a more Everyman hook to hold my interest, something more down to Earth, if you will. So, I was pleased to learn that attached to the arm of Curiosity is something I can relate to, an everyday penny. The coin is part of a plaque containing other objects of known size, shape and color, which will work together for calibration and context.

I understand that. But the coin is also a common element we can all connect with regardless of our technical and scientific aptitude, and so it serves a dual purpose—as an object for scale and as an object to attract the public’s attention. We can follow the progress of Curiosity over the next two years, but we can also follow the penny, checking to see if the atmosphere on Mars has somehow altered it.

Giving us a token coin to follow isn’t to suggest we’re all too dopey to understand anything more complex, but the penny serves as our common denominator. Not to boil everything down to the crassness of money, but it’s our shared base.

It is the point from which we all start, and you can see it in our idioms, as we point to the common penny for inspiration. A penny saved is a penny earned. A penny for your thoughts. Penny wise and a pound foolish. Like a bad penny. In for a penny, in for a pound. Penny candy. Penny serenade. Penny pincher. See a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck.

Even as children, we collect pennies for our piggy banks and save for something that costs a gathering of pennies. When we are poor, we have just a few pennies; and when we are rich, we have more than we care to count. But in the end, we all have just pennies.

When Curiosity lands and begins its mission, it won’t only be our scientists who are invested. It will be out there roaming Mars for us all, and not just because our tax dollars are funding it. The rover represents us because just as the common penny is our base object, curiosity is our base trait, the point from which we start.

We don’t all have to understand X-ray diffraction to share in the stake of this mission or to appreciate its value. It’s worth a pretty penny.