- NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), under a grant from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, is studying a mission concept to return to the surface of Venus, known as the Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE), something not accomplished since the Soviet Vega 2 landed in 1985.
Current, state-of-the-art, military-grade electronics fail at approximately 125°C, so mission scientists at JPL have taken their design cues from a different source: automatons and clockwork operations. Powered by wind, the AREE mission concept is intended to spend months, not minutes, exploring the landscape of our sister world. Built of advanced alloys, AREE will be able to collect valuable long-term longitudinal scientific data utilizing both indirect and direct sensors.
As the rover explores the surface of Venus, collecting and relaying data to an orbiter overhead, it must also detect obstacles in its path like rocks, crevices, and steep terrain. To assist AREE on its groundbreaking mission concept, JPL needs an equally groundbreaking obstacle avoidance sensor, one that does not rely on vulnerable electronic systems. For that reason, JPL is turning to the global community of innovators and inventors to design this novel avoidance sensor for AREE. JPL is interested in all approaches, regardless of technical maturity.
A clockwork rover that runs from a turbine that converts gale force winds to power. Man... I didn't realize that weed was legal at NASA! :-) So it is 864 degrees F. All the lead around you is liquid. The pressure is 92x that of Earth, and the winds are up to 1.5km/h, or like gale-force winds on Earth (around 50mph, on our little blue planet). I need to invent/design a turbine that can operate in these conditions for at least a year. And operate the clockwork mechanisms of the rover (since electronics melt). And the only problem they want me to solve, is how to AVOID OBSTACLES?!? I mean... that problem has already been solved, right?
The way to look at it is you're at the bottom of the ocean, and that ocean is made of sodium. Your "wind" is more of a "current." This, but inconel: This, but inconel: Naaaah dawg I'll bet all their science and communication shit lives in a tidy little RTG-powered Peltier-cooled hermetically-sealed sphere with an antenna poking out. Dollars to donuts this is a "throw an instrument package at Venus and see if it breaks" mission and if someone can come up with a strandbeest that will allow the sphere to sample more area it's a stretch goal. Well, yeah, the "how do we keep shit from breaking at the bottom of a sodium ocean" aspect is their bread and butter. Inconel lawn tractors aren't.So it is 864 degrees F. All the lead around you is liquid. The pressure is 92x that of Earth, and the winds are up to 1.5km/h, or like gale-force winds on Earth (around 50mph, on our little blue planet).
I need to invent/design a turbine that can operate in these conditions for at least a year.
And operate the clockwork mechanisms of the rover (since electronics melt).
And operate the clockwork mechanisms of the rover (since electronics melt).
And the only problem they want me to solve, is how to AVOID OBSTACLES?!?