NASA develops tire to traverse red planet

摘要

While NASA's newest tire is the result of years of research and development, it was a chance meeting between old colleagues that moved it from a unique R&D project to a key piece of an upcoming mission to Mars. The team at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland engineered a tire - the Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) Spring Tire - that can handle the heavy load of a lunar rover while traversing rough, rocky Martian terrain and enduring extreme temperatures. And while the launch date is years away, the practical uses of the technology already have emerged on the consumer market.