New photos from Mars show NASA Rover has holes in its wheels
NASA’s Mars rover has been exploring Gale Crater since 2012. That’s a long time to endure dust storms, drive along the base of a mountain and crawl over endless jagged rocks. The Curiosity Rover’s aluminum wheels have taken a beating new images with some dramatic gaping holes. But don’t worry: NASA has it under control.
The photos are eye-opening. Curiosity has six wheels and some are worse off than others. The right center wheel looks rough, but “still holds up well despite Mars’ worst abuse,” rover engineer Ashley Stroupe wrote in an article. mission update on September 24. The steering wheel has a gaping hole where you can see the mechanisms inside.
Some Curiosity wheels are in better condition than others. This is pierced by rocks.
NASA is not concerned about the situation. The damage has been increasing for years, so the rover team has come up with some clever solutions to extend the life of the wheels. The team examines the rover’s path and tries to avoid particularly difficult terrain. Curiosity can also reverse over rough spots to reduce pressure on certain wheels.
Curiosity regularly checks its wheels. Multiple sets of images and disks are needed to expose different parts of the wheels.
“This is an activity we perform periodically to assess the condition and health of the wheels,” Curiosity team member Remington Free wrote in an mission update on September 23. “To fully document our wheel status, we will drive seven meters in approximately three hours.”
The rover is equipped with multiple cameras, but uses the Mars Hand Lens Imager mounted on its robotic arm to view the wheels.
An illustration shows the difference in the designs between the older Curiosity Rover wheels and the newer Perseverance wheels.
Curiosity has traveled more than 20 miles on Mars, and NASA has learned a lot in that time. The newer Perseverance rover, which landed in another Martian crater in 2021, has a modified wheel design. Percy’s wheels are larger in diameter, narrower, and have curved treads, as opposed to the chevron pattern used for Curiosity. The adjustments are intended to avoid the problems Curiosity has encountered. So far, Perseverance’s wheels are doing well.
Curiosity has done remarkably well, as it continually rolls over the Martian equivalent of Lego pieces scattered across the floor. The holes and fractures in the wheels are not slowing down the older rover’s scientific work. It’s still analyzing rocks, studying the history of water on Mars and trying to understand whether the red planet was once habitable to microbial life. It’ll take more than a few wheel holes to narrow down its style.
