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Comment by johnw | Hacker News Reader

Also interesting is the amount of damage being done to the wheels as it drives around up there. Some good pictures of that here[1]. Apparently the wheels are designed to leave a mark so they can keep track of the rovers location by looking at the tracks[2]. The tracks spell out JPL in morse code.

[1] http://news.discovery.com/space/martian-wear-and-tear-curios...

[2] http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/1002210...

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Thanks for the links, I figured that the lack of compliance in the "tire" section of the wheels would be an issue but that is a bit more damage than I would expect. I am guessing that under some driving conditions you might get up to 50% of the rover weight on a wheel and if that was while the wheel was rolling over a rock, the tendency would be to cut into the aluminium. So one wonders why not titanium outer rims? or a compliance system that would allow the wheel to deform until enough weight had been distributed across enough surface area to keep it under the 'minimal damage' threshold.

Considering the hole is non-structural and it's more than halfway through the original planned mission duration, those wheels look fine to me!

I wouldn't mind seeing the progression, though, since they say it's accelerated recently on the rough terrain.

"It appears to be correlated with driving over rougher terrain."

Who'd have thought....

When I read the article that also popped out for me.

Unbelievably obvious. Obviously somethings are different in the Martian environment, but the laws of physics didn't just look the other way when they saw the rover coming.

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