WASHINGTON, D. C. - When American astronauts visit the moon and Mars on the upcoming manned missions that President Donald Trump ordered last week, there's a good chance their space exploration vehicles will use tires made of special springs that are under development at Cleveland's NASA Glenn Research Center.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration began seeking new tire designs after noticing the jagged surface of Mars had pierced the aluminum tires on its Curiosity rover, forcing the agency to reroute the vehicle around pointy rocks to limit damage so it could complete its mission.

To solve the problem on future vehicles, it turned to researchers in the historic hub of the tire industry: Northeast Ohio.

Northeast Ohio researchers worked on tires for space vehicles in the 1960s, when they made them with a mesh of interlocking steel springs for the Apollo missions to the moon. Engineers at NASA Glenn set up a partnership with Akron-based Goodyear to resurrect those tires and take up where their developers left off.

"We found the two guys - who were in their mid 80s - who did the original work," says Goodyear senior engineer Jim Benzing. "One of them actually had the tires in his closet for more than 40 years. That really helped us put the pieces together."

Exploration requires mobility—we’re working with game-changing materials and new designs to develop the next generation of spring tires for space exploration. Discover how we're using shape memory alloys to reinvent the wheel: https://t.co/xwL4dlYZUd pic.twitter.com/7V47i3qrDH — NASA Glenn Research (@NASAglenn) November 17, 2017

But there were problems when they tried to beef up those tires to handle the heavier loads required by modern space missions. The spring steel tires worked well on the moon with light loads, but they fared worse with heavier loads. NASA Glenn mechanical engineer Colin Craeger said the designs made with steel springs lost traction and durability and formed dents.

The solution came when Craeger discussed the problem with another Glenn researcher, Santo Padula, who suggested they instead make the springs from nickel titanium, a "shape memory alloy" that returns to its original structure after it is stressed. Tires made that way bounce back even if they're deformed all the way to their rim and hub.

"This will be useful on whatever missions we send to the moon or Mars," says Craeger. "For us, it is a matter of customizing the technology for the application."

Researchers also believe the tires could have dozens of potential terrestrial applications, for areas where conventional tires have high puncture rates, like agricultural or off-road uses. Goodyear is using the technology to develop tires for earthly uses.

While the specialized alloy makes the tires far more expensive than conventional tires, Goodyear's Benzing says "it's peanuts" compared with the cost of having something fail when it gets to the moon or Mars.

"You don't want to spend half a billion dollars on something and then have the tires fail," says Benzing. "There is no tire shop around the corner."