Can wheels be damaged in vacuum?

[firda]

How can the weels be damaged when they never touched the ground and were inside fairings during launch?
You can still see the fairings base:

 

Is it possible that the fairings did not cover the lander fully? I am not 100% sure it survived the launch, I am just surprised when landing it at Minmus.
I will get engineer to repair it, not a big problem, just want to know, what caused this. Thank you.

Edited December 31, 2017 by firda
typo

[maceemiller]

It could be that the fairing was so close/touching the wheels that when the fairing deployed it caused the damage. I had a similar problem once which, when deployed ripped off my solar panels. I tried again with a bigger fairing and it was fine.

[firda]

Thanks for confirmation, I will be more careful and check it when in orbit next time.