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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#1
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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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Jun 11 2013, 12:51 PM
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#2
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 20 Joined: 19-March 13 Member No.: 6897 |
The big problem, I am told, is memory. We can probably make devices with hundreds or perhaps a couple thousand transistors (enough for a microcontroller, the Intel 4004 had 2300 transistors), but we pretty much can only do SRAM right now, which limits us to maybe 100-200 bits (not even bytes) in the near term (next few years). And even that is difficult. I don't get the idea that it's just a few steps to a big VLSI.
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Jun 11 2013, 04:50 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
I wonder if a "two-brain" strategy might make sense for a Venus lander. One that has sensitive parts and stays alive for hours, then dies as expected, and one that has tough, robust, vacuum-tube-style electronics that transmits low-bandwidth data for months. In particular, if that could break down into imaging and gas chromatography that is done during descent and just after landing -- perhaps a laser-induced spectrometer -- and then long-term seismological monitoring.
It's encouraging to think that improvements in electronics might make this mission cheaper one day, if not now. The last and only time a US mission transmitted data from the surface of Venus was 1978. That's astonishing. |
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Jun 12 2013, 05:13 PM
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#4
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 20 Joined: 19-March 13 Member No.: 6897 |
Indeed, I had thought of such an approach. It makes certain things a lot easier, for instance the camera and as you said some kind of spectrometer. You'd also want probably a pressure probe, temperature probe, and anemometer (wind speed), too, to determine if seismic events are really just caused by the wind.
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