NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has skilled some severe put on and tear throughout its almost 14 years on the Crimson Planet.
A brand new photograph posted to Curiosity’s uncooked picture server gives a close-up of the injury one of many rover’s wheels has skilled because it explores the Martian floor.
What’s it?
Curiosity landed in Mars’ Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, touching down whereas hanging below a ‘sky crane’ that lowered it to the planet’s floor. Since then, the rover has traveled over 20 miles (32 kilometers) throughout the rocky Martian soil, trying to find potential indicators of historic life on the Crimson Planet.
All of that mileage has taken a toll on the rover, as these new photos present. Curiosity weighs over one ton, and the terrain on Mars may be fairly rocky and rugged.
NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) periodically use the rover’s cameras to verify on the wheels, and regardless of the holes and cracks, the company mentioned in a 2024 assertion that they are “holding up nicely regardless of taking among the worst abuse from Mars.”
Why is it superb?
We have been exploring Mars for many years now, so it may be straightforward to take without any consideration how unimaginable it’s that we get new photos beamed from the floor of one other planet to Earth day by day from NASA’s two robotic explorers.
These photos of Curiosity’s wheels assist illustrate the unimaginable feats of engineering and science it took to put wheeled robots safely on the floor of one other planet the place they spend years and journey dozens of miles to deliver us solutions about what different worlds are like.
Whereas they may not be human, Curiosity and Perseverance nonetheless characterize humanity’s first foray into changing into an interplanetary species. The groundwork laid by the rovers and different Mars orbiters, landers and probes might sometime assist humanity take its first steps on one other planet.
