Wheels Spinning

This image was taken in the clean room where the Curiosity rover is being assembled. It shows the rover, which is about the size of an SUV, hoisted on a white lift, with its black wheels suspended in the air. One engineer is on top of the hoist and is leaning over the rover body, while another is looking up on the ground floor to the right of the rover. Both engineers are wearing white "bunny suits" to keep them from contaminating any equipment.
July 13, 2010
CreditNASA/JPL-Caltech
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  • english

Engineers just installed six new wheels on the Curiosity rover, and rotated all six wheels at once on July 9, 2010. This milestone marked the first in a series of "tune ups" to get the rover ready for a drive in the clean room where it is being assembled at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Curiosity is the centerpiece of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, which is expected to launch in late 2011, and touch down wheels-first in summer 2012.

For more information about the mission, see: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.

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