High-Level Project Summary
The main idea is to use litho-sulfur batteries to store energy inside the Rover, these have an encapsulation with layers of airgel, carbon and aluminum, which have a useful life of 1500 charge and discharge cycles. When the Rover is about to discharge, it will have the ability to deploy a balloon that will create a short circuit between the surface and the atmosphere of Venus, taking advantage of its electric field and charging. This would ensure that the Rover remains charged for more than 60 Earth days, withstanding the corrosion and extreme temperatures that occur on Venus.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
For NASA it is important for planetary exploration in the solar system, for this it is necessary to have instruments for sampling and data collection, these instruments are usually mounted on a vehicle, which must withstand the conditions of the planet, in addition to having an optimal power supply. For the case study, Venus is a planet that has very extreme conditions, starting with an average temperature of (460°C) and an atmospheric pressure of (93 bar); conditions that are impossible for current technologies to operate.Many missions from different countries have been sent to Venus, but the result in most of them has been practically the same, having problems with landings, operation and power or battery systems. The missions require a long period of time on the planet in order to obtain data at different times and collect important information about the time variable vs. the sampled data. All the Venus missions that have been able to operate, have operated for periods no longer than 2 hours and this implies that the measurements cannot be compared in order to make a large sampling.
Its our first time working on a Hackaton, we dont expect to win but we enjoied the process and that´s enough
Space Agency Data
We used the data borrowed by NASA space agency
Hackathon Journey
Our main goal was to learn and test ourselves on a real problem, we knew it wasnt going to be easy scince the bearly beginning.
We chose the challenge Exploring Venus Together because of our interest in hardware and its singularity. We learnt about the importance of studying Venus due to its similarities with Earth, its agressive atmosphere and temperatures, some alternatives such as using non-electronical devices to explore the surface of the planet and the fact that Venu´s magnetic fiel is much smaller than its electric field.
Some of us did not know anything about batteries, so we had to make some research work in order to start having some ideas.
References
Energy Storage Technologies for Future Planetary Science Missions. NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech. (December 12, 2017) https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/549/energy-storage-technologies-for-future-planetary-science-missions/
High Energy, Long Cycle Life, and Extreme Temperature Lithium-Sulfur Battery for Venus Missions. https://techport.nasa.gov/view/92914
Venus Resources. By Staci L. Tiedeken, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. (September 14, 2022) https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/1519/venus-resources/?page=0&per_page=40&order=created_at+desc&search=&tags=Venus&category=324
Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE). Jonathan Sauder. (Apr 7, 2016) https://www.nasa.gov/feature/automaton-rover-for-extreme-environments-aree/
Exploring Hell: Avoiding Obstacles on a Clockwork Rover. Sarah Schlieder. (February 18, 2020) https://www.nasa.gov/exploring-hell-venus-rover-challenge