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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Apr 5 2013, 05:56 PM
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 20 Joined: 19-March 13 Member No.: 6897 |
I've found a microcontroller that's supposed to work at 250C:
http://www.ic72.com/pdf_file/i/141332.pdf Doesn't look to be widely available, but it's still the very best I've found for a microcontroller (it's hard to even find transistors in this range...). http://www.ims.fraunhofer.de/news/detailan...electronic.html That's getting close. Some people think the highest altitude parts of Venus are around 350-380C (100 degrees cooler than the average surface). This would allow long-duration stays in the lower parts of Venus's atmosphere (tethered balloon?) or perhaps make simple cooling techniques feasible (high-temperature solar panels hooked directly up to Peltier cooling devices... though the long and hot night would be a problem...). Which reminds me, are there any electronics that could /survive/ at 400C, even if they can't operate at that temperature? The instruments could be operated only during the daylight when there is power to run the cooling equipment. Of course, operation by an RTG (even a small one) would be preferable, but that increases the minimum cost significantly. Which reminds me, are there any betavoltaic devices (far cheaper, less restriction on usage I think) which can operate at 400C? Too bad they only output on the order of 1E-6 Watts. We need at least one Watt before we can talk about cooling electronics (more like tens of watts, for a very small device). What is the insolation (Watts per meter squared, not just direct but also diffuse) at noon on the surface of Venus? |
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