spacetoday.net: Curiosity wheel wear increases

Curiosity wheel wear increases

Posted: Tue, Dec 24, 2013, 11:24 AM ET (1624 GMT)
Curiosity wheel showing wear, Dec 2013 (NASA/JPL)

As the NASA Mars rover Curiosity continues its exploration of Gale Crater, engineers are closely watching an unexpected increase in wear on the rover's wheels. Mission officials said that while dents and small holes in the rover's six aluminum wheels were expected, the rate of wear on the wheels appears to have accelerated in the last month. That wear is not impairing the rover's ability to traverse Martian terrain at this time, but controllers plan to take a set of images of the wheels in the near future to better catalog the wear on the wheels so that can be used for planning future drives by the rover.