High-Temp Electronics For Venus Exploration, recent advances |
High-Temp Electronics For Venus Exploration, recent advances |
Mar 13 2013, 03:36 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 127 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 291 |
(MOD NOTE: Started a new topic for this discussion to continue. Please remember the 'no sci-fi engineering' provision of rule 1.9. Have fun!)
Also, since I'm thinking about surface operations on Venus, the state-of-the-art in high temperature electronics has advanced quite far in the past decade. Its now possible to buy off the shelf chips from vendors designed to operate at the 250-300 C range. Meanwhile basic functionality has been tested at and beyond the temperatures needed for long-term surface operations on Venus: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/SiC/ http://www.gizmag.com/extreme-silicon-carb...ctronics/16410/ http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/SiC/publicatio...Contact2010.pdf Another decade or so and a long-term Venus lander could be possible with (practically) off the shelf electronics! |
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Mar 27 2013, 03:24 AM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
I'm officially your distant relative now, Dan, and I got a few bills...
Seriously, this is not a trivial problem. A Venus lander of any sort either requires a VERY well-controlled temperature environment for its electronics (which IIRC was the Venera strategy) or not only electronic components that can survive extreme temp swings during the cruise phase but also the same for all required electrical connections. The latter are obviously quite vulnerable to materiel expansion/contraction cycles, which ultimately loosen connections over time and introduce either spurious or high-resistance interface points which can do all sorts of nasty things to signal flow. (For example, MIL-STD-1553 data buses really don't like impedance changes; tends to turn perfectly good data words into gibberish.) How I see this playing out is a loosening of environmental control constraints over time for the silicon itself but capability bounded by a hard constraint on connection methods unless suitable (and workable, as Dan pointed out) connection/wiring alloys of some sort can be developed that are extraordinarily resistant to thermal cycling. That's a rather daunting challenge in metallurgy. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Mar 27 2013, 03:39 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2542 Joined: 13-September 05 Member No.: 497 |
The latter are obviously quite vulnerable to materiel expansion/contraction cycles... The cruise environment is fairly benign and once you get to Venus it's just hot all the time, there isn't a lot of diurnal variation. Exactly what the interconnect is made of is another question. That said, the SiC components are at a very early level of development so I'd say we are quite a ways away from having real and capable systems that would work at Venus ambient conditions. RTG-powered refrigeration systems are feasible: http://web.archive.org/web/20010106124800/...p/vgnp.txt.html but for the foreseeable future I think short-lived landers are all we are likely to see, unfortunately. -------------------- Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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