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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.'"
There's a fun fact about the wheels of Curiosity. They spell out "JPL" in Morse Code in the sand of Mars. :)
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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.
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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!
From the article:
This sounds an idea from the same people that brought us the Mars Climate Orbiter crater.
The problem with this is that Curiosity weighs 342kg but masses 900kg. Scarecrow weighs and masses 342kg. 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. The fact it drove 12km and has serviceable wheels does not make me feel better.
Really? I think its more a testament to just how well NASA over-engineers and builds everything for the absolute worst case scenario that we get so much extra use out of these things. I mean look at how long Voyager has lasted way the hell out in the cold depths, that's a tough built ship right there.
But this is why I've always supported the robotics space exploration programs, with our current tech "meatbags in spaaace!" really doesn't make much sense. I mean when you figure in what it would take to get a crew of five to mars and back its just insanity, 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 just to carry all the consumables and fuel needed, I don't even want to know how much it would cost for a stay as long as these rovers have had there. At the end of the day we can just get more done with the machine than we can with the man, our tech just isn't good enough right now to make "meatbags in spaace!" viable.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.