NASA is getting creative with the Curiosity Mars rover, which will backtrack on its route to reduce the wear and tear on the vehicle's wheels.
The maneuver was the first time Curiosity ever performed a long backward drive, travelling 329 feet in reverse Tuesday. The rover drove over a smooth path and tested a strategy that could reduce damage done to Curiosity's six aluminum wheels.
According to Space.com, those wheels have been a point of interest for NASA officials, as they have been had their fair share of holes and dents. The rover also recently climbed a dune to reach a smoother path, a move that also tested how Curiosity handled driving on a slope.
"We wanted to have backwards driving in our validated toolkit because there will be parts of our route that will be more challenging," Curiosity Project Manager Jim Erickson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., said in a news release.
NASA learned late in 2013, in the months following its one-year anniversary on Mars, that Curiosity's wheels were more damaged than anticipated. Curiosity mission managers used orbital images to map out a smoother path for the rover and needed to clear the dune to reach it.
"After we got over the dune, we began driving in terrain that looks like what we expected based on the orbital data," Erickson said. "There are fewer sharp rocks, many of them are loose, and in most places there's a little bit of sand cushioning the vehicle."
Curiosity is on its way to Mount Sharp, the mountain at the center of the Gale Crater, where NASA landed its latest rover in Aug. 2012. Scientists believe Mount Sharp contains sedimentary evidence that could unravel the mysterious environmental history of the Red Planet.
"We have changed our focus to look at the big picture for getting to the slopes of Mount Sharp, assessing different potential routes and different entry points to the destination area," Erickson said. "No route will be perfect; we need to figure out the best of the imperfect ones."
