Nearly a decade on it its mission, NASA's Curiosity rover has left several marks on Mars, and the Red Planet is returning the favor.
According to CNET, the rocky terrain inside Mars' Gale Crater has taken significant bites out of Curiosity's six aluminum wheels. The damage appears to be severe, but don't worry; Curiosity should be able to continue trundling around for some time.
"The current predicted odometry remaining is expected to be sufficient to support Curiosity throughout the remainder of the mission," Andrew Good, a spokesman for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages Curiosity's mission, told Space.com.
Wear and tear on the rover's wheels is unavoidable on Mars' rough surface, which includes dry, hard-packed soil, boulders, and uneven topography. However, NASA is optimistic that the rover will continue to function for some time. Good said that the gouges and gashes on the rover's wheels "always look nastier than they are."
While the holes in Curiosity's wheels appear to be a concern, NASA has known about them for at least five years.
Curiosity landed on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012 (EDT), which means that by 2017, the Mars Curiosity mission had been on the planet for more than twice as long as its primary mission, which was initially slated for one Martian year (about 687 Earth days). That mission has now been extended, thanks in large part to the rover's own resiliency.
Curiosity has been climbing the sides of Mount Sharp, which climbs 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the sky from Gale's center, since September 2014. The rover is scouring the rock strata for clues about Mars' long-ago transition from a reasonably warm and wet past to the harsh desert planet we know today.
Curiosity has traveled a total of 16.86 miles (27.14 kilometers) on Mars so far, much of it through rugged, rocky terrain as part of a mission to see if the region could have ever supported microbial life. The robot quickly found an answer to that question, discovering that Gale formerly had a potentially habitable lake-and-stream system that lasted millions of years.
The wheel-wearing experiences of Curiosity influenced the design of NASA's next Mars rover, Perseverance, which landed on the floor of Jezero Crater in February 2021. Perseverance's wheels, for example, are slightly wider in diameter and have twice as many treads than Curiosity's.
It's quite astonishing that Curiosity's wheels still have some Martian kilometers left in them at this point.
