NASA’s Mars rover has been exploring the Gale Crater since 2012. That’s a long time to weather dust storms, drive along the base of a mountain and crawl over endless pointy rocks. The Curiosity rover’s aluminum wheels have taken a beating, with new images showing some dramatic gaping holes. But don’t be alarmed: NASA has it under control.
The photos are eye-opening. Curiosity has six wheels and some are worse off than others. The right-middle wheel looks rough, but “is still holding up well despite taking some of the worst abuse from Mars,” wrote rover engineer Ashley Stroupe in a mission update on Sept. 24. The wheel sports a gaping hole where you can see down into the mechanisms inside.
Some Curiosity wheels are in better shape than others. This one has been punctured by rocks.
NASA isn’t sweating the situation. The damage has been building for years, so the rover team came up with some clever solutions to extend the life of the wheels. The team scrutinizes the rover’s path and tries to avoid particularly nasty terrain. Curiosity is also able to drive backward over rough patches to reduce the strain on certain wheels.
Curiosity regularly checks up on its wheels. It takes multiple sets of images and drives to expose different parts of the wheels.
“This is an activity we do periodically to assess the state and health of the wheels,” Curiosity team member Remington Free wrote in a mission update on Sept. 23. “For full documentation of our wheel state, we will drive seven meters over the course of about 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 covered over 20 miles on Mars and NASA has learned a lot during that time. The newer Perseverance rover, which landed in a different Mars 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 modifications are meant to prevent the issues Curiosity has experienced. So far, Perseverance’s wheels are going strong.
Curiosity has done remarkably well considering it’s constantly rolling over the Mars equivalent of Lego pieces scattered all over the floor. The wheel gaps and breaks aren’t slowing down the elder rover’s science work. It’s still busy analyzing rocks, studying the history of water on Mars and seeking to understand if the red planet might have once been habitable for microbial life. It’ll take more than a few wheel holes to cramp its style.
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