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NASA Commissions Ultra High Temp Chips for Venus Landsailing Rover

posted by janrinok on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the pack-the-sunscreen dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

For a Venus lander mission, active cooling of most of the electronics would be necessary, but it would also need sensors, actuators, and microcontrollers that can stand up to Venus' surface conditions. Trying to keep this stuff from immediate "puddleification" isn't easy, but NASA has just thrown a quarter of a million dollars at a University of Arkansas spinoff to develop Venus-resistant chips for a weird little rover.

Thanks to some earlier National Science Foundation funding, Ozark Integrated Circuits already has a chip that can tick along quite happily at temperatures of up to 350 degrees Celsius. To bump that up to the temperatures required for Venus operation, Ozark is using a silicon carbide substrate, with a secret sauce (literally a secret, for now) for the interconnects that's something much more stable and reliable than either aluminum or copper. Besides the physical hardware, Ozark also has to come up with biasing circuits and reference models to help compensate for high temperature operation.

Does exploration of Venus suffer because it does not seem possible for life to exist there, the way it does for Mars?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:32PM (#219232)

    To be fair it took them about 10 times before they got it right...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observations_and_explorations_of_Venus#Early_landings [wikipedia.org]

    Venus is a harsh planet.

    NASA is Mars-obsessed and has a tendency to build wimpy little fragile things.
    If you ignore Mariner, Pioneer, and Magellan.

    Currently the best is 1-2 hours lander before the thing melts or stops working because of pressure. Then what you find there will not be much more interesting than what is on Mars. Mars lets you work out the kinks of the rest of the system. Such as 'what happens if your flash ram eats itself'.

    NASA has always done baby steps. Even the moon landing was basically 15 or so launches of baby steps before they did it even then it was still a 'maybe'. The USSR was more 'lets go for it!' 'oh it blew up' 'do it again but fix whatever broke and lets go for it!'. NASA is more akin to a money manager working with small interest rates and USSR is more of a 'bet it all on red' investor.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:41PM (#219264)

    Mariner, Pioneer, and Magellan

    Don't forget The Little Rover That Could.
    It has by far exceeded its specified lifespan.

    It's twin was also very impressive.

    -- gewg_