Video: Curiosity Rover Tries Out Its New Wheels for the First Time
Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory had a big week last week, mounting the Remote Sensing Mast and an array of navigation and sensing cameras on their latest Mars rover. Then on Friday Curiosity took its , traveling about three feet back and forth on its brand new 20-inch aluminum wheels.
To the applause of cleanroom-clad NASA engineers, Curiosity crawled along the floor of a lab at JPL while being controlled remotely by wire, rather than by the software that will direct the rover’s movement on Mars. But as a milestone it’s fairly significant. Just a few weeks ago, Curiosity looked like spare parts; today it is the size of a small SUV – far larger than the Spirit and Opportunity rovers already on Mars – and looks the part of a next-gen space exploration vehicle.
But the best is yet to come. While Curiosity is now outfitted with two navigation chams, two mast cameras and a laser chemistry camera, it will soon enough be augmented with its principal geology tool: a 6-foot robotic arm sporting a powerful jackhammer drill and a microscope.
If the schedule holds up, Curiosity should launch next year and arrive on Mars in August 2012. From there, it will explore the landscape for a suitable landing site for future missions while collecting and analyzing rock samples that should shed more light on the planet’s geological history.
See Curiosity go in the video below.
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