Gift Wrapped Mars Wheel

April 03, 2020

This wheel, and five others just like it, is headed to Mars on NASA's Perseverance rover; the launch window opens July 17, 2020. Wrapped in a protective antistatic foil that will be removed before launch, the wheel is 20.7 inches (52.6 centimeters) in diameter and machined from a solid block of aluminum; the spokes are titanium. The image was taken on March 30, 2020, at a payload processing facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.