NASA to Assess Damage to Curiosity Rover's Wheels

The wheels of NASA's Mars Curiosity rover are sustaining damage at an increasing rate, the space agency said Friday.

The rover is still operational, and a degree of wear and tear on the wheels was expected. But NASA said it wants to investigate the damage done to the rover's wheels and how the Martian terrain is impacting the rover's mobility so that future drives can be planned better.

"We want to take a full inventory of the condition of the wheels," said Jim Erickson, project manager for the NASA Mars Science Laboratory Project, which operates Curiosity. "Dents and holes were anticipated, but the amount of wear appears to have accelerated in the past month or so. It appears to be correlated with driving over rougher terrain. The wheels can sustain significant damage without impairing the rover's ability to drive. However, we would like to understand the impact that this terrain type has on the wheels, to help with planning future drives."

The Curiosity has six 20-inch diameter wheels in a "rocker-bogie" suspension. Each wheel has cleats and is independently actuated and geared, which can provide the car-sized spacecraft with the traction necessary to move across the and and rock that cover the surface of Mars.

Recently, the Curiosity rover has crossed an area with numerous sharp rocks embedded in the ground, NASA said. Due to the wear on the rover's wheels, routes to future destinations may be charted to lessen the travel of such rough terrain.

NASA also reported a software upgrade on the Curiosity.

"Curiosity is now operating on version 11 of its flight software," Erickson said. An earlier attempt to upgrade the rover's operating system to version 11 caused a malfunction that caused the rover to reboot itself and return to version 10. It took one week to complete the software upgrade.

The software upgrade was the third the Curiosity had received since landing on Mars 16 months ago.