The Wheels On NASA's Mars Rover Look Awful In These New Photos

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NASA's Curiosity rover recently performed a routine check-in on its mission-critical wheels, and upon first glance, the damage it's sustained while traversing Mars looks really bad. For all the advancements made in science and engineering over the years, there's one thing that proves to be a constant issue with space exploration: aging equipment. Computers become outdated, engines get old, and there's no good way around it.

This is something that was perfectly evident last year. NASA's 32-year-old Hubble telescope had two major outages in 2021 — first because of an issue with its payload computer, and then thanks to missed synchronization codes. There's also been rising concern over the age of the International Space Station. Following repeated instances of hardware failures on the research center, NASA's now planning to retire the ISS in 2030.

Related: Why Future NASA Rovers Will Glow On Mars But Not On Earth

The aging issue also applies to rovers — including the Curiosity rover. Curiosity landed on Mars in August 2012 and has been patrolling the planet ever since. Curiosity's mission was only supposed to last two years, but NASA extended it indefinitely in August 2017. While that extended life has been hugely important for continued research, it hasn't come without some negative side effects. Believe it or not, having Curiosity traverse the rough and rocky Martian surface for nearly 10 years has put a huge toll on it. NASA revealed just as much with a series of photos from Curiosity late last month. Curiosity uploaded a series of images that show the current status of its wheels. As you can clearly see in the pictures above and below, they don't look good. There are a lot of holes/gashes throughout Curiosity's wheels.