More wheel damage detected on Curiosity
Click for the Sol 4518 original image.
In a set of new pictures taken of Curiosity’s wheels yesterday it appears that the damage to those wheels has increased significantly in the past year, with the most damaged wheel (which based on contradictory science team reports is either the middle left or middle right wheel), having more had more sections broken to the point where this wheel might even fail in the near future.
The pictures to the right show these changes. The treads, called grousers, have been numbered to make the comparisons easier. The bottom two pictures were taken in September 2024, and look at this wheel with the damage on the side to show how a whole section of the wheel had at that time collapsed to form a depression.
The top two pictures show the increase in the damage in this section between February 2024 and yesterday. Note especially the changes in growlers 4, 5, and 6. Not only have large sections broken off in the wheel’s central section, it appears that the wheel’s outside section is beginning to separate from that central section.
The increased damage in the past year illustrated starkly the roughness of the terrain that the rover is traversing. Moreover, there is no sign that roughness is going to ease anytime in the near future. This increased damage thus explains partly why the science team changed the rover’s route to get to the nearby boxwork geology as fast as possible. That unique geology is likely to provide some important scientific information unobtainable elsewhere, and it seems worthwhile to get to it before this particular wheel fails.
There is one silver lining to this cloud. This particular wheel is a middle wheel, which means it is less critical to maintaining the rover’s stability as it travels as well as sits. The photographs of the other wheels taken today do not show as much change. Even if this wheel fails, the rover will still have five working wheels, including the most essential four corner wheels.
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Click for the Sol 4518 original image.
In a set of new pictures taken of Curiosity’s wheels yesterday it appears that the damage to those wheels has increased significantly in the past year, with the most damaged wheel (which based on contradictory science team reports is either the middle left or middle right wheel), having more had more sections broken to the point where this wheel might even fail in the near future.
The pictures to the right show these changes. The treads, called grousers, have been numbered to make the comparisons easier. The bottom two pictures were taken in September 2024, and look at this wheel with the damage on the side to show how a whole section of the wheel had at that time collapsed to form a depression.
The top two pictures show the increase in the damage in this section between February 2024 and yesterday. Note especially the changes in growlers 4, 5, and 6. Not only have large sections broken off in the wheel’s central section, it appears that the wheel’s outside section is beginning to separate from that central section.
The increased damage in the past year illustrated starkly the roughness of the terrain that the rover is traversing. Moreover, there is no sign that roughness is going to ease anytime in the near future. This increased damage thus explains partly why the science team changed the rover’s route to get to the nearby boxwork geology as fast as possible. That unique geology is likely to provide some important scientific information unobtainable elsewhere, and it seems worthwhile to get to it before this particular wheel fails.
There is one silver lining to this cloud. This particular wheel is a middle wheel, which means it is less critical to maintaining the rover’s stability as it travels as well as sits. The photographs of the other wheels taken today do not show as much change. Even if this wheel fails, the rover will still have five working wheels, including the most essential four corner wheels.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
At some point, Curiosity will die.
We all just hope that it happens when its RTGs finally deplete, not when a mission-critical wheel breaks.
We spend a fair bit of time here criticizing the waste and inefficiency of NASA, even in its science directorate. But it is worth recognizing when they triumph, too. And the JPL team which have managed to keep Curiosity roving around Gale Crater a full thirteen years and going strong have surely scored a triumph. I hope they have a few more such triumphs left in their bag.
Growlers? In the tracked construction equipment industry we called the ribs on the track shoes “gousers.”
Judd: You are correct. This was a misreading of the word from a previous post. Now corrected.
On topic: Richard is right. That rover is an amazing piece of equipment and its designers and builders deserve much credit.
Off topic: I guess “gouser” is jargon of the day.
I recently learned that “careen” means to tip a ship over on its side on a beach in order to scrape and repair the bottom. Does that still happen? I wonder how it came to mean moving too fast for control and bouncing (or nearly so) off things in the way – but not enough to look it up.
Does anyone ever stop learning English?
Richard M,
Curiosity’s RTG should be good for another two or three decades at least. Even if its wheels fail sufficiently to strand it, SpaceX will be able to send not only needed spares but an Optimus pit crew to install them in only a few more years.
As part of its Mars push, I’d like to see SpaceX propose a comprehensive Mars rover refresh and revival tour using a single unmanned Mars Starship that could land near Curiosity, overhaul it, then do suborbital hops to visit all the other rovers and administer any necessary fixing to them too. Bring Spirit, Oppy and maybe even Sojourner back from the grave! That could even include the PRC’s Zhurong rover if suitable arrangements can be made. Last in line could be Percy and Ingenuity. Once repairs/upgrades to both are complete, Percy’s samples could be collected, sealed and hopped back to SpaceX’s initial human base site – either before or after humans are actually present – for return on the next departing Earth-destined Starship. This could all be done for a tithe of what NASA was figuring to spend on Mars Sample Return alone.
Dick Eagleson: Fixing the old rovers on Mars sounds good at first glance, but as an efficient way to explore and research the planet it makes no sense. If we can get there easily to fix them, then we can do the exploring ourselves, much faster and cheaper. And if we can’t stay there for a long time for practical reasons, it makes more sense to deposit new rover/helicopters, that can travel much more efficiently on Mars and get to many places unreachable by a rover.
Better to go and get them for installation in the first Museum on Mars. The colonists will certainly want a place they can go for education and recreation.
That all sounds rosy–but it may be best to have the atomic rovers drag themselves atop a rise so as to end life as a weather station.
Once humans arrive on Mars there probably won’t be many – maybe any – to spare for long-distance exploration right away. Getting a base built and setting up ISRU methalox production would take priority. But robots will be preceding humans to Mars and the outlined mission is something that could be done before any humans even arrive.
That said, the proposed mission could be changed to a collection-for-later-display rather than a repair-and-revive one. But I still think Curiosity and Perseverence deserve repairs and upgrades. With really solid wheels – plus the use of a Mars-circling Starlink-like comms constellation that SpaceX will also be sending – the atomic rovers could both speed up and more quickly report their further explorations.
Ha, i misspelled grousers too.
Amazing what you can miss when proofreading your own writing, you can’t see the mistake because you know what you meant.
I think the real work of Mars exploration will come with teams of humans and drones, guided by a network of Mars surveillance and communications satellites. Drones far more capable than Ingenuity, able to maximize the limited time and energy (and radiation exposure limits) of their human overseers, focusing their time on sites and features of higher importance.
I smiled at Dick’s suggestion, but Bob is probably right that Curiosity’s long-term fate is going to be as a treasured exhibit in the Smithsonian’s Mars Annex Museum. In the meantime….according to its specs, Curiosity’s MMRTG “is designed for more than 14-year life and has 125 We power at the beginning of mission, with 100 We of predicted power at the end of 14 years..” That does not clarify how long that might be stretched out by gradually shutting down instruments or systems of lesser importance, however. We are coming up on that 14 year mark within the next year, however, so I assume this is not going to be a theoretical question any longer for the JPL operations team.
I think it is kinda pie-in-the-sky thinking to contemplate fixing up any of the rovers currently on Mars… I can’t see that being cheaper than building a new rover or 2…
Regarding NASA’s involvement… I have said this several times… Where NASA shines is in science missions, specifically interplanetary missions. There is no financial incentive for a Mars Rover or a mission to Uranus, so it’s fantastic that NASA has the skills, the engineer’s and ( hopefully) the funding to conduct such missions. ( ESA are doing their best, but have nothing like the resources of the US ). However manned space flight is rapidly becoming a commercial option…. Let private space do its thing, and let the US, ESA, JAXA, and even Russia when they calm down, buy manned flights from the private sector.
I just hope that we never arrive at a place where exploration for the sake of exploration gets put to one side because the powers that be see no benefits…
My daughter is buzzed about JUNO… she has been fascinated about Europa since we looked at the Jovian moons thru my telescope a couple of years ago. I think I might have a little space related scientist on my hands… And that’s in no small part down to NASA… We ain’t in the US, but your influence is wide…. And scientifically, beneficial to us all.
Richard M,
14 years? Weird, given that the Pu-238 those RTGs ae fueled with has a half-life of almost 90 years. Seems as though the design could have provided a longer useful lifetime than that. Oh, well. Maybe the same guy who designed the wheels also designed the RTGs.
The mission outlined wasn’t predicated on it being cost-effective – except for the sample retrieval part – but as a demonstration of capabilities that could easily come in handy for non-optional reasons on Mars or other places off-Earth.
Mark Sizer,
That “careen” thing has been in my vocabulary for decades – but then I first read C.S. Forrester’s Hornblower books almost a half-century ago. Lots of antique nautical lingo in those. Ripping good yarns too. Re-read them most recently just last year.
Lee S,
The weirdly short lifespans of their RTGs – of which I was not previously aware – do suggest my little “modest proposal” would be largely pointless, at least in the case of Curiosity. Too bad, as it would have been a good test of Optimus robots sent off unaccompanied to do complex things – something I strongly suspect we will need to do at some future point. Whatever the cost-effectiveness deficiencies of fixing old rovers, those do not appear to attach to sending the robots to collect the Perseverance samples. The NASA estimates, and even that of Rocket Lab, for such retrieval seem way more than the incremental expense of using some hardware that will already be on Mars for other reasons just a few years hence.
Daughters are a delight are they not? Mine certainly is. Good to know you’ve been similarly blessed.
I think NASA has gotten its money’s worth out of Curiosity. (Its “official” planned mission duration was 2 years!)
I have heard that they think they can get a fair number of more years out of it by turning off certain things and judicious patterns of operation. So it may have a while to go.