Michael Cole at Spaceflight Insider:
Engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, are reinventing the wheel in a way that may allow rovers and other future mobile vehicles to traverse the treacherous surface of Mars with greater and longer success. They have developed a woven mesh tire made of a shape-memory alloy, or SMA, that “remembers” its ideal shape and immediately springs back into form after absorbing the bumps and beatings of traversing rocky terrain.
In a recent test, the newly-developed tire was subjected to 6 miles (10 kilometers) of difficult driving over a punishing simulated Martian surface. At the end of the test the tire was as good as new. By comparison, the rigid aluminum wheels of the Curiosity rover, which has driven not quite twice that distance during its entire mission so far, are currently riddled with holes and dents from the rougher-than-expected punishment of traveling over the Martian landscape.
One reason I love space agencies is that their design project are just so … practical.