Engineering Mistakes Become Innovations: Mars Rover’s Wheel Drag Exposes Potential For Life

There are numerous examples of how engineers and scientist went into their labs for one thing and came out with something different – and better!  Many of those discoveries have changed our lives for the better, such as the discovery of rubber and penicillin.  In that spirit, we bring you a multi-part series here on coolingZONE on , “Engineering Mistakes Become Innovations”, inspired by and courtesy of EDN’s Suzanne Deffree article: “Accidental engineering: 10 mistakes turned into innovation”

NASA Mars Rover  When NASA landed its Spirit rover on Mars in January 2004, it planned for a 90-sol (solar day on Mars) mission. But, aided by cleaning events (a phenomenon where dust is removed from solar panels by wind) that resulted in higher power from its solar panels, Spirit went on to function effectively more than 20 times longer than NASA planners expected following mission completion.

Two days into its extended mission term in March 2006, Spirit’s front wheel stopped working. The initial determinant caused the rover to drag its wheel as it continued on, somewhat like pushing a shopping cart along with a jammed front wheel.

What was originally seen as an obstacle turned out to be a lucky break of sorts. The force of the dragged wheel scraped off the upper layer of the planet’s soil, uncovering a patch of ground that is believed to show evidence of a past environment that would have been suited for microbial life. It has been reported that the patch is similar to areas on Earth where water or steam from hot springs came into contact with volcanic rocks.

NASA used this information in planning for the 2012 landing of Curiosity.