Rough Roving: Curiosity's Wheels Show Damage

astroengine writes "In a recent batch of images beamed back to Earth from Mars rover Curiosity's MAHLI camera, obvious signs of wear and tear could be seen in the 'skin' of the robot's wheels. Considering Curiosity is only 281 sols (Mars days) into its mission and roved less than a kilometer after landing, surely this doesn't bode well? Fortunately, there's good news. 'The wear in the wheels is expected,' Matt Heverly, lead rover driver for the MSL mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Discovery News. 'We will continue to characterize the wheels both on Mars and in the Marsyard, but we don't expect the wear to impact our ability to get to Mt. Sharp.'"

Wheel wearing

[girlintraining]

These wheels aren't like your normal car wheels. The very thin atmosphere means that the soil is more like lunar soil than Earth soil. Atmospheric erosion tends to smooth out sand particulate so it has a rounder shape -- it is less sharp. Lunar soil is incredibly corrosive. Think of all the problems our troops had operating in Iraq with their equipment, now multiply that by a hundred. It's like walking on microscopic needles. Martian soil isn't quite as bad, thanks to having had an atmosphere at one point, and retains a minimal one now, but it's still inhospitable.

The rover was designed with multiple wheel-sets to operate independently, and the wheels themselves designed to wear somewhat more gracefully in the face of these obstacles. But yes, they're going to look ugly fast.

Re:Fun fact

[kuiken]

The sections where added to be used to to visually measure the precise distance between drives.

source:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20120829f.html [nasa.gov]