Nasa researchers have made a breakthrough in space technology by developing a computer chip that can survive in extreme heat on the planet Venus for multiple weeks without any form of protection or cooling system.Scientists from Nasa's Glenn Research Center have developed a computer chip that can survive Venus' surface temperatures of up to 470°C (878°F), as well as the 9 MPa atmospheric pressure, which is 90 times higher than on Earth, without a cumbersome system to keep it cool.
The breakthrough was possible by building the chip out of silicon carbide (SiC) – a new type of ceramic semiconductor material that is able to cope with high voltages and temperatures, as well as making sure that the tiny wires that connect transistors and other components in a circuit (known as "interconnects") are able to survive the extreme conditions too.The researchers demonstrated that their chip was able to continue to function at 1.26MHz for 521 hours continuously (21.7 days) when placed in the Glenn Extreme Environments Rig (GEER), a machine specially designed to emulate the temperature and pressure on Venus for hundreds of hours at a time.
This must be a major boost for Venus exploration especially if you want to put a rover down on the surface.http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nasa-finally-develops-computer-chip-that-can-survive-500c-temperatures-venus-1605664
This has a long way to go. So far they have 2 transistors running. Granted they run without any packaging or cooling but this is a long way from a processor, or an ADC (likely pretty important for data collection devices).
Quote from: Star One on 02/09/2017 04:55 pmThis must be a major boost for Venus exploration especially if you want to put a rover down on the surface.http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nasa-finally-develops-computer-chip-that-can-survive-500c-temperatures-venus-1605664This has a long way to go. So far they have 2 transistors running. Granted they run without any packaging or cooling but this is a long way from a processor, or an ADC (likely pretty important for data collection devices). Space probe processors are not noted for their extreme speed but 1.23MHz is at the level of the early 70's
NASA should stop wasting money on probes to Venus. They know what an inhospitable place it is. There is nothing to be gained from spending hundreds of millions of dollars just to confirm what they already know.Use the money to set up a permanent moon base to gain knowledge and experience for an eventual trip to Mars.
Does this problem remain if the lander only has to execute orders given by a separate module which stays at more moderate temperatures?
Quote from: haywoodfloyd on 02/10/2017 12:24 pmNASA should stop wasting money on probes to Venus. They know what an inhospitable place it is. There is nothing to be gained from spending hundreds of millions of dollars just to confirm what they already know.Use the money to set up a permanent moon base to gain knowledge and experience for an eventual trip to Mars.What so now everything they do should be focussed on human colonisation. I'd think you'd find plenty who disagreed with that approach. You could just as easily say humans have no place in exploration and it should all be done by robots.
Even concerning human colonization Venus is an excellent destination, at ~45-55km in the high latitudes. Most Earthlike place in the solar system outside of Earth, and normal Earth air is a lifting gas (aka, you can live inside the envelope). See Landis 2003 for more. There's huge amounts of power and mineral resources. Water's on the low end, but the planet hands you a wide range of important industrial chemicals straight from the air. Sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, phosphoric acid, hydrofluoric acid; base gases like carbon dioxide, nitrogen and noble gases at orders of magnitude higher concentration than on Mars; etc. Even iron has been detected in Venus's clouds (iron chloride) - suggested on the order of 1% of the mass of H2SO4. And the surface, while inhospitable, is absolutely accessible; the Soviets were doing so with technology they developed in the 1960s. They found getting to and studying the surface of Venus much easier than the surface of Mars. There's multiple technologies being testedin the lab (bellows and phase change balloons) for bringing up minerals from the surface, and the atmosphere is thick enough that you could dredge it.The only thing that keeps us from doing more with Venus is that NASA virtually never funds missions to Venus. Since 1978, there's been only one NASA mission launched to Venus (not counting flybys en route to other destinations), and none since 1989.
I could see some great spin-offs to this technology. There are a lot of hot environments in engines and industrial processes that could use electronics that operate at such high temperatures.
Power can come from High temp ASRG, high temp RTG (older RTGs operated at high enough temperature that they could dump heat even at Venus temperatures), solar (yes, there is some light down there), or even very large thermal batteries, which actually like to operate at high temperature anyway.Here is a design study based on this concept, baselining the high temperature RTG: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272522839_Venus_high_temperature_atmospheric_dropsonde_and_extreme-environment_seismometer_HADES
Yeah, Landis.
But as to human colonization fantasies, what makes Mars accessible is its low escape velocity. Venus is much closer to Earth in that respect.
The rocket equation is an unrelenting exponential and huge rockets with over a thousand tons of propellant would be needed to return even a mini-ITS from Venus
Re, Venus's atmopsphere, ~55km, ~70° latitude
Quote from: Rei on 02/11/2017 06:22 pmRe, Venus's atmopsphere, ~55km, ~70° latitudeThat's basically a point value. I was thinking more in terms of a profile as the probe dropped through the atmosphere. In particular the "2nd cloud level" I think you mentioned?It's obvious from this chart either the Venus atmosphere model needs revision or a more sensitive instrument needs to be sent. However I presume the original instrument was expected to be sensitive enough to detect the compounds at the concentrations the model predicts they should be at anyway.
What planetary scientists really want to have on the surface of Venus for a longer period of time (like a Venus year), is seismometers. The major mystery of Venus is that it was resurfaced only about 0.3 billion years ago. Was it because of some kind of volcanism? Venus is as large and old as the Earth, it is the perfect laboratory for geophysics. Seismometers are sensitive things, so I imagine that it might be hard to do.