REAL LIFE NEWS: NASA DEVELOPS CHAINMAIL TIRES FOR FUTURE ROVERS
by Hazed
The Curiosity rover, which has been trundling around on mars for 5 years, has had problems with its wheels getting damaged. Now NASA has come up with a new design for tires that will prevent this damage and provide a better grip for future rovers.
The tires use a chainmail mesh called “spring tires”. The mesh forms a pattern that provides good grip on many surfaces, it’s not too heavy, and it’s robust enough to survive some damage. But on its own the spring tires wouldn’t solve the problem because they don’t deform well. If it rolls over something sharp, the tire can get dented.
But some metals have “shape memory” which means they can be deformed and then return to their original shape, so when the NASA scientist working on the new tires got into a conversation with a NASA materials scientist, they soon realised that the work the latter was doing on nickel titanium would be ideal for the tires.
The result is a tire that can roll over razor-sharp rocks without taking any damage. There’s a video at the source link below that shows the tires in action.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/20/nasa_nickel_titanium_spring_tires/
