Though they're correct in that this is not a dramatic 'mission killer' like many implied at the start.
It's more on the line of stuck heaters or right front wheels on the MERs.

The statement

(of the press release)
may include local choosing of a less damaging path to the same destination, either on a manual day-by-day basis, or by adjusting weighting for AutoNav or Hazard Avoidance:
(MSL-PIP, p.12).
It doesn't (yet?) look to me like a major change of the planned route to the entry point.

Minor deviations from the planned track to 'swerve' around potentially damaging terrain seems like good applied common sense to me.

Thank you Gerald, my interpretation of what was said were off then, it had me think of the largest scale.

So just as what Serpens said, then this is something that make sense.

Happy new year!

There are some really awesome ChemCam images of a tear in the right middle wheel that have just been returned from tosol (sol 502), plus a Navcam context image.

Here's a mosaic of those chemcam images.



Stretched and sharpened (and that's just the images!)

...Great mosaic, surely a fix-it ticket 'till the buttes

I know nothing (actally, td bits) about alloy wheels rolling over the surface of Mars, and I'm certainly not
having a dig. If it wasn't for this excellent Forum, I wouldn't know what a puncture or
tear in an alloy wheel of MSL was or looked like.

Surely, the fact that the MSL team will be plotting 'smoother' terrain in future is a hats off
to the folk who first expressed their concerns in May last year.

Sure the wheels should be robust enough through the design of the spokes and cleats to remain
circular, but holes, cracks, tears and buckles in the tread may become deleterious in soft, dusty situations.

The wheelhole in colored ChemCam

To me the holes and tears tell the story, that several of the rocks are as sharp as knifes, some with almost the hooklike properties of a can/tin opener.
That's certainly important to know for future missions, in cases where exposed vessels may need to be kept under pressure.

Edit (Jan 5 2014): A Sol 502 illustration:

(Raw image)

There are no grounds to make such an assumption. The wheels were built with many big holes in them, intentionally. The test rovers ( both VSTB and the Scarecrow ) have happily driven across soft and sandy situations with damage as bad, and significantly worse and more thoroughly distributed around all 6 wheels than we're seeing on Curiosity. Indeed - I've seen people argue that paddle like additions to rover wheels would be of benefit when trying to drive thru soft terrain, based on the notion of sand-paddle wheels for extreme off roading. Big rips and tears may even offer benefits along those lines.

I still see no damage ( nor any action by the team ) that presents any risk, whatsoever, to achieving mission goals. Nothing seen, announced or planned in any way could be considered a 'hat tip' to the doom-mongers in this place ( and elsewhere ) who were claiming mobility would soon be a thing of the past and we'd never get to the science targets at the foot of Mount Sharp.

People have been very carefully picking quotes from the JPL release....here's one worth remembering..

"The wheels can sustain significant damage without impairing the rover's ability to drive."

Not really Mr V. People saw dings and a few punctures in the thin aluminium and many went well over the top in making ill considered comments. Such damage was not a surprise and was in fact expected from design trials with the test prototypes which as I understand it performed satisfactorily in dusty / sandy conditions with worse damage. The design teams for the MER and MSL have so many runs on the board that armchair observers could perhaps give them credit for a job well done rather than insinuating some kind of planning failure on their part. The decision to avoid potentially damaging terrain when there is no compelling science related requirement to transverse it is most sensible and does not imply any inability of the MSL to handle such terrain if required.

Astro0 - brilliant mosaic.

Precisely, serpens, and well said!

Also, a nod to Gerald: Yes, any knowledge gained from not only the science but also the engineering performance of not just the wheels but ALL MSL mission systems under real-world conditions (that world being Mars in this case) will undoubtedly be used to refine future designs in all respects.

That's why it's called exploration, folks. We're right in the face of the unknown, in every way, and during every sol. It's not for the faint of heart.

ADMIN: Previous four posts removed. Please read the Forum News>Important Announcements>Curiosity Wheel Discussion.

This would be a great project for someone here to undertake. Just what this particular discussion needs.
It'd be just as useful as the wonderful route maps that Tesh and Phil create.
If we get this 'rolling', then we'll set it up as a pinned thread.




Here's a good starting reference from Gerald to put onto the graphic that Emily created.

Any takers?