paulhammond51554844 - "Tis but a scratch"
AussiemandeusI know they probably can’t but the way NASA has fixed things remote in the past i wouldn’t be surprised if they repaired it somehow
You know NASA too well… They do have a cunning plan…
Not exactly a repair, but when things get really bad, JPL has a plan to minimize risk with a “wheel shedding” maneuver…
You can read all about the plan here: …ieee.org/if-necessary-mars-rover-curiosity-could…
SCmSTRWhat is the skin made out of? Is it also aluminum? What ever happened to using nitinol or whatever that memory metal was for wheels where rubber wasn’t appropriate?
What is the skin made out of? Is it also aluminum
Each of the wheels were machined out of solid billets of aluminum, the skin is very thin, the thickness of a old soda can (back in the day when cans were thicker than today). The wheel spokes are made from titanium. I’m not sure what other materials were considered for the wheels on this mission, but there would have been alternatives like you mentioned.
For Perseverance Rover they also used aluminum wheels, but they added additional grousers and replaced the zig-zag design with a gentle curve that reduced the numbers of stress points dramatically. Other changes were also made, and the new designed wheels are performing great in and around Jezero crater, with only a few scratches after more than 1800 solar days on Mars