Man that wheel is so much thinner than I was expecting. I was surprised it was broken at all until I noticed how thin the material is. That looks like it’s less than a quarter of an inch of what appears to be rigid material for something about the size of a medium-ish car.
It was getting damaged power much as soon as they started using it. It’s kinda weird they didn’t catch something like that in testing on earth? Were the rocks on Mars just that more jagged?
But also I think the wheels are aluminum as well, so very soft metal.
What I’m curious about is the “engineering model.”
All NASA missions have duplicate probes, satellites, rovers, here on earth. They’re essential for testing various scenarios like training astronauts (in the case of the Hubble repair missions), or testing the limits of the systems in question. I wonder if the engineering model for Curiosity has one of its wheels cut away in the same pattern, to simulate difficulties in navigation and traction?
Maybe that’s why the took the photo of the wheel?
Now that you mention it, that’s probably why.
Im tired, boss.
They’re gonna drive that thing till the wheels fall off.
In this economy? We have wheels at home.
I feel this. It’s not the years, honey. It’s the mileage.
And the little bugger is still chugging along. Amazing.
You’re saying we’ve polluted Mars with microplastics too!?
Not just Mars, but yes. Biodegradability isn’t even a factor since there’s no biosphere to speak of, which also raises philosophical questions like: “what is pollution, exactly?”
What will really bake your noodle is to imagine a future where we settle the Moon and Mars. Do old space program artifacts become monuments and parks (debris and all), or are they trash to be removed from the environment?
Knowing humans, yes! I think they will. Probably not the bits that fall off, they’ll most likely be placed in the visitors centre but given how sentimental we are as a species I can absolutely see us one day touring the sea of tranquility space reservation.
No, the wheels are made of aluminum, not plastic
Oh, Cool!
They’ve lasted quite well.
But it’s apparently one of the things the designers want to do better with future rovers.
The design was meant to be light-weight while providing good traction on the martian surface, but it has turned out more fragile than they’d hoped. All six wheels on Curiosity are quite damaged.
The wheels on Perseverance are still aluminium, but instead of the zig-zag tread, the large gaps of flat metal that have been getting punctured, were done away with. The wheels on Percy instead have a dense pattern of wavy tread.
you answered my question before I could even ask, thanks for sharing!
You’re welcome! Percy and Curiosity are magnificent machines! There’s a ton of fantastic content out there about their design and engineering. Smarter Every Day and Real Engineering both have videos about them.
Most people also don’t realize how absolutely HUGE they are, until they see a person stand next to one of them on video or in a picture.
I had the opportunity once to see Curiosity modeled in a VR environment as if you were standing on Mars next to it and I remember how very surprised I was at how big it was.
As a fun side note now that you’ve jogged my memory. That same demo also had a model of the Rosetta spacecraft orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. For whatever reason it was sized so that the
asteroidcomet was about the size of a cat and I will never forgot watching that itty bitty little satellite orbit around that odd shapedasteroidcomet in front of me.https://www.aam-us.org/2016/02/23/experiments-in-virtual-reality-at-the-museum-of-flight/
It’s okay, Mars is low on fossil fuels and could use some global warming, so the Martians are already burning it as we speak.
