This is John Batcher, conversation with my good colleague Bob Zimmerman of Behind the Black,

about curiosity, climbing, climbing, climbing on the surface of Mars.

However, Mount Sharp ahead, a lot of bumps. The wheels, called Growsers, the wheels on curiosity

are showing where, and Bob here explains where the wearer is worse and why concern ourselves with it or not,

where the wheel is and the road ahead.

There is damage, but they steer through a rocky terrain.

Bob Zimmerman, much more of this tonight about the wheels and Mars and everything else is Bob.

Routinely will compare and I always focus on the worst wheel.

Recently this is the wheel that in 22 they discovered had some significant damage along four of the treads.

They call these treads growzers.

And so of course, for the treads in the middle of the wheel, the was missing basically broke off and so they did

another survey this week and they didn't take that same spot from above which is what

they've always done looking down at it.

This time they had images that showed it from the side in two directions, and that was really

helpful because it really shows that there's been more, of the growls has collapsed more and the result

is that you've got a depression in the middle of the wheel at this one location so

the wheel has deteriorated more what's good is this is a middle

wheel. This is the middle left wheel of curiosity. It's got six wheels and the ones

that are really more critical are the ones on the corners but even on the

corners they've got redundancy so this wheel is less critical to the operation of

the rover but the damage here just indicates overall they have to treat these wheels carefully and be aware of the

damage as it builds over the years.

...