Wheels Spinning

Engineers just installed six new wheels on the Curiosity rover, and rotated all six wheels at once on July 9, 2010. This milestone marked the first in a series of "tune ups" to get the rover ready for a drive in the cleanroom where it is being assembled at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Curiosity is the centerpiece of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, which is expected to launch in late 2011, and touch down wheels-first in summer 2012.