Reinventing The Wheel
Reinventing the Wheel
Planning a trip to the Moon? Mars? You’re going to need good tires…
Exploration requires mobility. And whether you’re on Earth or as far away as the Moon or Mars, you need good tires to get your vehicle from one place to another. Our decades-long work developing tires for space exploration has led to new game-changing designs and materials. Yes, we’re reinventing the wheel—here’s why.
Wheels on the Moon
Early tire designs were focused on moving hardware and astronauts across the lunar surface. The last NASA vehicle to visit the Moon was the Lunar Roving Vehicle during our Apollo missions. The vehicle used four large flexible wire mesh wheels with stiff inner frames. We used these Apollo era tires as the inspiration for new designs using newer materials and technology to better function on a lunar surface.
Up springs a new idea
During the mid-2000s, we worked with industry partner Goodyear to develop the Spring Tire, an airless compliant tire that consists of several hundred coiled steel wires woven into a flexible mesh, giving the tires the ability to support high loads while also conforming to the terrain. The Spring Tire has been proven to generate very good traction and durability in soft sand and on rocks.
Spring Tires for Mars
A little over a year after the Mars Curiosity Rover landed on Mars, engineers began to notice significant wheel damage in 2013 due to the unexpectedly harsh terrain. That’s when engineers began developing new Spring Tire prototypes to determine if they would be a new and better solution for exploration rovers on Mars.
In order for Spring Tires to go the distance on Martian terrain, new materials were required. Enter nickel titanium, a shape memory alloy with amazing capabilities that allow the tire to deform down to the axle and return to its original shape.
These tires can take a lickin’
After building the shape memory alloy tire, Glenn engineers sent it to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Mars Life Test Facility. It performed impressively on the punishing track.
Why reinvent the wheel? It’s worth it.
New, high performing tires would allow lunar and Mars rovers to explore greater regions of the surface than currently possible. They conform to the terrain and do not sink as much as rigid wheels, allowing them to carry heavier payloads for the same given mass and volume. Also, because they absorb energy from impacts at moderate to high speeds, there is potential for use on crewed exploration vehicles which are expected to move at speeds significantly higher than the current Mars rovers.
Airless tires on Earth
Maybe. Recently, engineers and materials scientists have been testing a spinoff tire version that would work on cars and trucks on Earth. Stay tuned as we continue to push the boundaries on traditional concepts for exploring our world and beyond.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
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Last year in my introductory course to health sciences, Determinants of Health (HSS 1101) I’ve learned that besides physical wellness, health encompasses 6 other dimensions: (1) social health, (2) emotional health, (3) spiritual health,(4) environmental health, (5) occupational health, and (6) intellectual health.
Taking this class and learning about the 7 dimensions of health made me realized that wellness is much more than merely physical health, exercise or nutrition. It is the full integration of states of physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Each of these seven dimensions act and interact in a way that contributes to our own quality of life.
Wellness is achieving one’s full potential. It is self-directed and an ever-evolving process that follows a lifestyle of balance in health that ultimately decreases the likelihood of becoming ill physically, mentally, and spiritually. Comprised of seven dimensions and characteristics, wellness is achieved when a person’s life includes all seven elements in combination and in whole.
Take Occupational Wellness Assessment Take Emotional Wellness Assessment Take Spiritual Wellness Assessment Take Environment Wellness Assessment Take Physical Wellness Assessment Take Social Wellness Assessment Take Intellectual Wellness Assessment
Hey! Just wondering, how did a solar eclipse prove the theory of relativity?
According to the theory of relativity space is not static. The movements of objects can change the structure of space.
In Einstein’s view, space is combined with another dimension - time - which creates universewide “fabric” called space-time. Object travel through this fabric, which can be warped, bent and twisted by the masses and motions of objects within space-time.
One prediction of general relativity was that light should not travel in a perfectly straight line. When traveling through space-time and approaching the gravitational field of a mass object, the light must bend-but not too much.
Then the English astronomer Sir Frank Watson Dyson proposed that the total solar eclipse of 1919 could prove, because the Sun would cross the bright Hyades star cluster. Star light would have to cross the gravitational field of the sun on the way to Earth, but would be visible due to the darkness of the eclipse. This would allow precise measurements of the positions displaced by the gravity of the stars in the sky.
Because of this, teams of researchers strategically positioned themselves in two locations that would initially provide the best conditions for observing the eclipse. One group stayed in Ilha do Príncipe, in São Tomé and Príncipe, and other researchers settled in Sobral, Ceará (Brazil).
Eddington, who led the experiment, first measured the “true” positions of the stars during January and February of 1919. In May, he went to remote Prince Island (in the Gulf of Guinea, on the west coast of Africa) to measure Positions of the stars during the eclipse, seen through the gravitational lens of the sun.
The total eclipse lasted about 6 minutes and 51 seconds, during those few minutes the astronomers captured several photos of the total eclipse. When Eddington returned to England, his data from Príncipe confirmed Einstein’s predictions.Eddington announced his discoveries on November 6, 1919.
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