Assessing Mars Curiosity Rover Wheel Damage

An alarming rate of wheel skin cracks was first ob-served on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover about 14 months after the start of its surface mission. Nine years later (as of August 2, 2021), Curiosity has four broken wheel grousers, three on the left middle wheel and one on the right middle wheel. There are a substantial number of wheel skin cracks on the left front, left middle, and right middle wheels such that the number of grousers on each that are considered at risk of breaking are 10, 7, and 11, respectively. Although the current level of wheel damage does not significantly limit Cu-riosity's mission objectives, a higher damage rate could impact surface operations, so the damage rate is closely monitored. On November 30, 2013, the MSL Surface Operations team began periodically acquiring images of Curiosity's wheels. In this paper, we describe the process the Mobility Operations team uses to assess wheel damage, the current state of Curiosity's wheels, and how the wheel damage assessments have influenced driving guidelines and wheel imaging frequency.