Curious about Curiosity

Throwback Thursday to last Friday and picture a wide-eyed little girl jumping off a bus into the Mars yard yelling, "I'm going to walk on Mars!"Yeah. That was me. Despite the fact that we were not actually walking on Mars, the first thing that I was intrigued about was the make of the wheels on the rover Curiosity. These wheels are made of aluminum and have to withstand the geological forces of the surface of Mars which is actually proving to be difficult. Looking into the make of the wheels of Curiosity I stumbled upon an article from August that wrote about the origins of the puncture holes in the rover's wheels. At first scientists were confused--they knew to expect some sort of damage over time, but not to the extent that there were puncture holes within the inner parts of the wheels themselves. It turns out that the surface of Mars that they have been sending Curiosity on is mostly bedrock, solid rock inevitably with protrusions, that could puncture the wheels over time--something that the scientists did not see on Mars before. How are they planning on prolonging the wheel lives of Curiosity? The scientists believe that Curiosity has about 8 kilometers left to go on Bedrock with lots of rocks, 13-14 kilometers on rocks without bedrock, and 30-40 kilometers on flagstone with an indeterminate quantity for smooth and sandy surfaces. With these numbers, scientists have come up with various solutions to the damage from changing the driving software to experience less force on the wheels from pointy rocks to simply driving backwards. Where the rover will end up next is in the hands of the scientists, given the wheels don't give out first. Check out the article here.