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 8 2013, 10:38 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 128 Joined: 10-December 06 From: Atlanta Member No.: 1472 |
I think it is unreasonable to expect a full fledge high-temperature computer with tons of flash memory; at least early on. The more likely system would be something akin to the late 1960s or early 70s technology (say Voyager style). One solution is to have most of the telecommunication systems and memory and command handling in a separate orbiter (which of course uses regular electronics), which then commands the lander in realtime and records the data without need for much memory in the lander. The orbiter could be in a low polar orbit and can probably communicates with the lander 10 minutes every 90 minutes or so.
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Apr 9 2013, 05:42 AM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1592 Joined: 14-October 05 From: Vermont Member No.: 530 |
I think it is unreasonable to expect a full fledge high-temperature computer with tons of flash memory; at least early on. Why? Once you have ICs working at your target temp, making them small/highly integrated is something we've figured out how to do really, really, well in the past 40 years since Voyager was state-of-the-art. Sure, you may be able to demonstrate a discrete component system at 600C while ICs only work at 250C. The thing is, though, once you have the basic IC components working at your target temp, I think it's entirely reasonable to assume you'll have a very competent microcontroller with decent volatile storage. Nonvolatile storage might have a different temp spec, but all that means is the power has to be on. Given those 40 years since Voyager, I'm not sure that with the skills we've gained in highly integrated circuits that we're ever going to have any high-temp technology that's "IC" without it being good enough to make a pretty complex integrated microcontroller. Either you have a lander with relatively unprogrammable instruments transmitting all data in real time-- and perhaps that would be really cool if it was long-lived-- or you have enough integration to do C&DH on the lander. It's really hard to imagine an in-between. |
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