The Wheels On NASA’s Mars Rover Look Awful In These New Photos

NASA’s Curiosity rover recently performed a routine check-in on its mission-critical wheels, and upon first glance, the damage it’s sustained while traversing Mars looks really bad. For all the advancements made in science and engineering over the years, there’s one thing that proves to be a constant issue with space exploration: aging equipment. Computers become outdated, engines get old, and there’s no good way around it.

This is something that was perfectly evident last year. NASA’s 32-year-old Hubble telescope had two major outages in 2021 — first because of an issue with its payload computer, and then thanks to missed synchronization codes. There’s also been rising concern over the age of the International Space Station. Following repeated instances of hardware failures on the research center, NASA’s now planning to retire the ISS in 2030.

The aging issue also applies to rovers — including the Curiosity rover. Curiosity landed on Mars in August 2012 and has been patrolling the planet ever since. Curiosity’s mission was only supposed to last two years, but NASA extended it indefinitely in August 2017. While that extended life has been hugely important for continued research, it hasn’t come without some negative side effects. Believe it or not, having Curiosity traverse the rough and rocky Martian surface for nearly 10 years has put a huge toll on it. NASA revealed just as much with a series of photos from Curiosity late last month. Curiosity uploaded a series of images that show the current status of its wheels. As you can clearly see in the pictures above and below, they don’t look good. There are a lot of holes/gashes throughout Curiosity’s wheels. Some are big, some are small, and there are plenty to see. Some wheels look better than others, but it’s apparent that Mars hasn’t been too kind to the rover.

Curiosity’s Had Damaged Wheels For Years

While this all looks rather alarming, the amazing part is that it’s nothing out of the ordinary for Curiosity. Holes in Curiosity’s wheels have been visible since 2014. They’re not ideal and continue to get worse with each passing year, but they’ve yet to make the rover inoperable. It’s also something NASA is well aware of (and actually quite content with).

Speaking to Space.com recently, NASA JPL spokesperson Andrew Good reassured that “The current predicted odometry remaining is expected to be sufficient to support Curiosity throughout the remainder of the mission.” Good also added that the holes in the wheels “always look nastier than they are.” Curiosity’s wheels sure aren’t pretty these days, but as long as they still work, that’s all that matters. If anything, these photos are a testament to how durable Curiosity is. It’s working well beyond NASA’s original plans for it, is still safely traversing Mars, and continues to share breathtaking photos of its journies. We’d say that’s well worth some rough-looking wheels.

Source: NASA (1), (2), Space.com

About The Author

Joe Maring
(1530 Articles Published)

Joe has been actively writing and talking about consumer tech since 2012. His biggest passion lies with smartphones, but he’s happy to talk your ear off about just about anything with a CPU. He lives in Kalamazoo, MI with his wife, two cats, and pit bull/boxer mix.

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