Curiosity, a rover launched by NASA in 2011, landed at Gale Impact Crater on Mars and explored alone for nearly 10 years, obtaining a large amount of scientific data and results, attracting a lot of attention from all over the world.
However, after Perseverance landed on Mars earlier this year, Curiosity seems to have been marginalized and less and less information has been heard about it. However, recently there was another news of Curiosity, but this news is a bit heart-wrenching, because Curiosity took a photo of his "foot", and netizens found that it was a bit unbearable.
Curiosity was designed to live for two years, but after reaching Mars, the state got better and better, and scientists continued to extend its "service" time, and finally simply announced that it would be extended indefinitely.
Curiosity has also fulfilled its mission, so far it has traveled nearly 27 kilometers on the surface of Mars, made a large number of scientific discoveries, let mankind have a deeper understanding of Mars, and laid a solid foundation for future human landing on Mars. Most of these results were discovered after the design life.
So scientists have high hopes for Curiosity, and let it take selfies from time to time, so that scientists can check its body, find problems in time, and make adjustments.
The most recent time was in late January, when ground personnel commanded Curiosity to photograph its own "foot" - aluminum wheels, and posted the photo to social media, netizens were very distressed after seeing it, saying that it looked too devastated, what happened?
It turned out that Curiosity's wheels had been hit by Martian rocks, and they were full of holes and holes, and it looked like they were about to be completely broken.
Some netizens said, is this the sun?? Or was it irradiated by uranium? Mars is full of uranium. (This statement is of course wrong, the surface of Mars cannot be full of uranium))
Others say it could be that Mars is too cold to freeze the aluminum.
Some people say, could it be that the Martians did it?
The worst part is a guy who says, is the wheel made in China? (What era is it still living in, and the quality of many things made in China is already very high)
Some people are also thankful for Curiosity, because its mass of 900 kilograms is only 315 kilograms on Mars, which makes its "feet" reduce a lot of burden.
Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory believe that the actual situation of Curiosity is now good enough, after all, it has been operating on Mars for nearly 10 years, and Curiosity's ground team has long noticed its wheel condition, checked every 500 meters of driving, and formulated mitigation measures to extend its service life, after all, the "foot" is paralyzed, and nothing can be done.
With the wheels in better condition than expected, the ground team has extended the regular inspection to 1,000 meters at a time, and according to spokesman Andrew Goode, there is nothing major about Curiosity's wheels at the moment, enough to sustain the remaining time of the entire mission.
So netizens may be worried about the ancients, due to the distance, the current Mars is 330 million kilometers away from the earth, it is really inconvenient to "send people" to repair, all the equipment launched into space and aliens is made by Seiko, durable, not only NASA's Mars rover, China's lunar rover, Mars rover is the same.
For example, Yutu-2 has been driving on the moon, where the environment is much worse than Mars, for more than three years, and it is still very healthy.
For the rover and the lunar rover, living is a huge asset, that is, to provide more data and experience for future planetary missions, so I hope that Curiosity and Yutu-2 can persist and live strongly. Well, it's a bit lofty, and essentially, THERE's no better way for NASA, so Curiosity is alive on its own.