Despite significant tire damage, NASA’s Curiosity rover is expected to be able to complete its scientific mission on Mars, officials from the space agency said in a recent statement.
About the size of an SUV, Curiosity rides along on six aluminum wheels. While years of driving around the Red Planet have done significant damage to the wheels, the rover should be able to reach its goal of climbing Mount Sharp in search of signs that Mars could have hosted life.
"Cracks and punctures have been gradually accumulating at the pace we anticipated, based on testing we performed at JPL," said Steve Lee, Curiosity’s control systems manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. "Given our longevity projections, I am confident these wheels will get us to the destinations on Mount Sharp that have been in our plans since before landing.”
You mean to tell me the much vaunted engineers at JPL/NASA couldn't come up with a wheel/tire mechanism that wouldn't out last just about everything else on the entire damn thing? SpaceX anyone? To read more, click here.