The upcoming Mars rovers may navigate the Red Planet utilizing advanced tires.
NASA’s Glenn Research Center shared images and videos from testing a groundbreaking tire, known as a shape memory alloy spring tire, which can undergo significant deformation on challenging terrain before reverting to its original form.
“We can genuinely compress this all the way down to the axle, and it will return to shape, something we could never even consider in a standard metal system,” Santo Padula, a materials research engineer at NASA Glenn, described in a new agency video.
The aerospace organization recently evaluated the tires on Martian-simulated landscapes at Airbus Defence and Space in the UK. The engineers reported that the tires successfully passed the tests on the rocky and slippery man-made surfaces — a promising indication of the innovation’s potential.
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The resilient metal is made of nickel-titanium, a substance capable of enduring extreme pressures. (Previous design concepts for NASA’s spring tires utilized steel, which is more prone to permanent deformation.) The existing rovers on Mars, Perseverance and Curiosity, are equipped with tires constructed from aluminum, which have become damaged and punctured as they traverse the rugged Martian landscape.
The impaired right-middle wheel of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, captured on Sept. 22, 2024.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
Prospective extraterrestrial rovers — especially those intended for crewed missions on Mars or the moon — would undoubtedly gain from durable tires resistant to damage. Repairing a flat or punctured tire on another planet will not be a simple task.
A self-repairing material may also be crucial for infrastructure. The moon, for instance, has nearly no protective atmosphere, meaning its surface is frequently bombarded by fast-moving micrometeorites. “We require new materials suitable for extreme environments that can offer energy absorption from micrometeorite impacts happening on the moon to facilitate the construction of habitats for numerous astronauts and scientists to conduct work on the moon and Mars,” Padula articulated.
Who knows — perhaps forthcoming Mars rovers, lunar bases, and even moon transit vehicles will incorporate this resilient metal, conceived for the demands of other worlds.