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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.'"
Since those 2 rovers outlasted their expected mission life by a factor of 20ish, everyone now expects every science mission to do similar. When they last for the amount of time they were engineered for people are disappointed. That's the danger in overachieving and the reason people feel compelled to use their full budget each year - if they're frugal for a year people expect that they'll be able to do the same every year and cut the budget. Some aspects of human nature stink.
If it was from the landing, it would have been noticed long before now. Curiosity went through a rigorous self check before it started on its primary mission of exploring the planet.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I think you are confusing abrasive with corrosive.
Whatever Curiosity weighs, it hitting a rock at 1m/s is still 900 newtons of force. Scarecrow hitting a rock at 1m/s is 342 newtons.
Stop accusing NASA scientists of not understanding their job when you don't remember basic physics.
F = m * a, not F = m * v. In this case a is the acceleration due to gravity. In addition, mass is measured in kg, weight is measured in Newtons, because weight is a force. The newtons are exactly the same between those two rovers.
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Because the project managers were given criteria. 1. it had to last for X months... 2. it had to be under X kilos. Which do you think was a harder goal? I think it's pretty obvious. Making things that last forever is easy. Making things that are light is easy. Making things that are both? Little bit more difficult.
I remember seeing a video where they did the math and for a 3 month stay on the ground and round trip from here to there you'd have needed a ship bigger than the empire state building
Your "math" is incredibly bad. Read any book on Mars from Zubrin and become educated.
What you are overlooking is that one human in one day could day about 100x the total research done so far by all of the rovers combined. What doesn't make sense is to continue to send very expensive robots to learn less and less... we've reached the point where we simply need to send humans to really study the place.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley