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'Tis But A Scratch!
Still plenty of miles on these wheels
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
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NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover
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Before the drive today it was
37.50 km - (23.30 miles)
Today's drive was around 30 meters
37.5km was what I was looking for considering the state of those wheels.
But lets be honest it's a rover on Mars we are operating 154 million miles (248 million kilometers) away. 30 meter is huge considering, the latency of the transmission/response must be mind blowing.
They send up drive commands for an entire drive. The onboard computer initiates the drive the next day, it has set parameters for tilt and roll as well as wheel slip, it stops on a regular basis and takes images to assess for hazards, if found it can drive around the hazard if the path is clear. if the hazard is too difficult considered to drive over or around it stops and acquires a complete set of images and calls home for a new set of commands. After the drive it sends home the drive data and a full set of images. The rover planners use the new images to plot the next drive