• LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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      27 days ago

      That thing hasn’t even traveled 20 miles I think. Going to say it must be getting a lot of damage from winds or something. Someone said it is aluminum.

  • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    What I’m curious about is the “engineering model.”

    All NASA missions have duplicate probes, satellites, rovers, here on earth. They’re essential for testing various scenarios like training astronauts (in the case of the Hubble repair missions), or testing the limits of the systems in question. I wonder if the engineering model for Curiosity has one of its wheels cut away in the same pattern, to simulate difficulties in navigation and traction?

  • Mossy Feathers (She/They)@pawb.social
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    27 days ago

    Man that wheel is so much thinner than I was expecting. I was surprised it was broken at all until I noticed how thin the material is. That looks like it’s less than a quarter of an inch of what appears to be rigid material for something about the size of a medium-ish car.

    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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      26 days ago

      It was just thick enough to hold well past the initial mission time. That means any thicker would have been a waste of materials, weight, and energy. If anything, it was too thick. Every gram counts when bringing objects to space.

    • stupidcasey@lemmy.world
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      27 days ago

      It’s thicker than it looks because the rover is much larger than it looks of course proportionally it’s still thin but curiosity is lighter than it looks because it was made for space snd mars is smaller than earth.

    • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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      26 days ago

      It was getting damaged pretty much as soon as they started using it. It’s kinda weird they didn’t catch something like that in testing on earth? Were the rocks on Mars just that more jagged?

      But also I think the wheels are aluminum as well, so very soft metal.

      • Zron@lemmy.world
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        27 days ago

        Designing any kind of space vehicle is always a trade off.

        The vehicle needs to be light enough to be launched from earth to mars, but durable enough to fulfill its mission goals.

        I’m sure if nasa had access to a vehicle that could send an M1 Abram’s sized, solid steel rover to mars, they totally would, but that would probably cost more than a moon mission, and the whole point of rovers is that they’re fairly cheap for the amount of research you can get out of them.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        26 days ago

        It’s lasted this long. I think they made the right decisions. No matter what it is, it’s going to be damaged. The goal is to make it still operate despite the damage for as long as possible. The goal isn’t to make it last forever, or to never be damaged. The more massive the wheels are the less mass everything else can be, so it’s a big trade-off.

      • Madison420@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        Yes rocks are more sharp on planets or moons with no or very little atmosphere because erosion by wind/rain forces is reduced.

        • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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          27 days ago

          They’ve lasted quite well.

          But it’s apparently one of the things the designers want to do better with future rovers.

          The design was meant to be light-weight while providing good traction on the martian surface, but it has turned out more fragile than they’d hoped. All six wheels on Curiosity are quite damaged.

          The wheels on Perseverance are still aluminium, but instead of the zig-zag tread, the large gaps of flat metal that have been getting punctured, were done away with. The wheels on Percy instead have a dense pattern of wavy tread.

            • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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              27 days ago

              You’re welcome! Percy and Curiosity are magnificent machines! There’s a ton of fantastic content out there about their design and engineering. Smarter Every Day and Real Engineering both have videos about them.

              Most people also don’t realize how absolutely HUGE they are, until they see a person stand next to one of them on video or in a picture.

              • barkingspiders@infosec.pub
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                27 days ago

                I had the opportunity once to see Curiosity modeled in a VR environment as if you were standing on Mars next to it and I remember how very surprised I was at how big it was.

                As a fun side note now that you’ve jogged my memory. That same demo also had a model of the Rosetta spacecraft orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. For whatever reason it was sized so that the asteroid comet was about the size of a cat and I will never forgot watching that itty bitty little satellite orbit around that odd shaped asteroid comet in front of me.

                https://www.aam-us.org/2016/02/23/experiments-in-virtual-reality-at-the-museum-of-flight/

          • itsmect@monero.town
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            26 days ago

            Fascinating! Thank you for including a picture of the new design, using the ribs to reinforce the surface should improve things a lot with minimal material added.

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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      27 days ago

      Not just Mars, but yes. Biodegradability isn’t even a factor since there’s no biosphere to speak of, which also raises philosophical questions like: “what is pollution, exactly?”

      What will really bake your noodle is to imagine a future where we settle the Moon and Mars. Do old space program artifacts become monuments and parks (debris and all), or are they trash to be removed from the environment?

      • DrownedRats@lemmy.world
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        27 days ago

        Knowing humans, yes! I think they will. Probably not the bits that fall off, they’ll most likely be placed in the visitors centre but given how sentimental we are as a species I can absolutely see us one day touring the sea of tranquility space reservation.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      27 days ago

      It’s okay, Mars is low on fossil fuels and could use some global warming, so the Martians are already burning it as we speak.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    typical humanity dropping plastic pollution on another planet before ever setting foot on it

  • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    The guy that tied up the wiring on the side there is looking at this photo (probably) and saying to himself: that wiring I arranged is on motherfucking mars and that’s just crazy.