By 
August 17th, 2015
Curiosity Mars rover used MAHLI to view this damaged wheel on August 16, 2015, Sol 1076.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has entered Sol 1077, landing on the Red Planet back in August 2012.
A self-inspection of its six wheels is periodically undertaken, keeping track of wheel wear and tear – damage that engineers keep an eye on.
For example, the robot’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) returned a new image of a Curiosity wheel on August 16.
This map shows the route driven by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity through the 1073 Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission on Mars (August, 13, 2015).
Numbering of the dots along the line indicate the sol number of each drive. North is up. From Sol 1072 to Sol 1073, Curiosity had driven a straight line distance of about 142.79 feet (43.52 meters).
The base image from the map is from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment Camera (HiRISE) in NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
MAHLI is located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm.
Posted in Space News
