High-Level Project Summary
Exploring Venus together is one initiative that try to provide a different visualization towards a solution to a storage energy system. Through research, hypothesis and discussions we bring the idea of utilizing renewable energy to power a rover during a exploration mission on Venus. The system consists of 3 balloons that uses wind energy to charge the batteries of the rover, this rover utilize rechargeable batteries with graphene electrodes and we believe that this way we will conclude successfully the 60 day mission. Exploring Venus together is important because it brings a new perspective to expand space exploration.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
The system will be charge by wind energy.
We estimate that the balloons must remain between 75 to 100m in altitude and need winds of at least 3 m/s to generate 100w individually, so 300w for 3 balloons.
Why 3 balloons?
This amount is to ensure redundancy, if the system fails partially (one balloon fails) we will still have two others and through a decoupling system, we can get rid of the dead weight.
But what if the wind gets too strong?
The balloons transmit power by cable directly to recharge the batteries in the rover and the rover can increase or decrease the altitude of the balloons by increasing or decreasing the length of this cable (pulling or releasing). The system will basically use a dynamo to transform the kinetic energy into electrical energy and be able to maintain both the balloons and the rover, hoping that the balloons do not need energy maintenance, transferring most of the energy captured to the vehicle.
How is the balloon made?
The propellers and dynamos are made of titanium-based alloys, a material that can withstand both high temperature and corrosion, and SiC-based electronic components.
The balloon has a 15mm outer layer of glass wool followed by a 30mm layer of expanded styrene for thermal protection and maintains its altitude due to hydrogen, a low density gas that will maintain the system's altitude.
The cable will carry power to two sets of 5 LiAl-FeS batteries with graphene electrodes, this addition of graphene should improve battery charging and extend the amount of time it can stay powered.
Sizing:
Battery-level specific energy: 80 Wh/kg (Should be improved by graphene)
- Depth-of-discharge: 60% (based on greater than 100 and less than 5000 cycles)
Lander battery stored energy = (11.6 hours)(5 W)/(0.6) = 97 Wh
Lander battery mass = (97 Wh)/(80 Wh/kg) = 1.2 kg
Ballons: Average power avaiable to lander 100W (Varies with wind speed)
As we have approximately 0.87m³ of helium, as the m³ of this gas allows us to lift 61.8 kg on the surface of venus, this gives us a net positive of 48kg of charge that the balloon was able to lift along with it, we can add the umbilical that connects the aerial part to the rover's batteries, as some possible data collection equipment. It opens the possibility of optimizing the size of the balloon by reducing the volume occupied in the transport. The system was dimensioned considering self discarge of 60%
Weight:
Balloon weight: 1.7kg
Turbine weight: 400g
Dynamo weight: 1kg
Support weight 2.2kg
Total: 5.5 kg
Space Agency Data
We used NASA data initially to become more familiar with the topic chosen for the challenge, as our confidence grew and we began to see the great complexity of the challenge, the searches for specific questions began. we based our system on reading articles about energy, batteries, renewable energy capture and we were certainly only able to complete this challenge due to the great passion transmitted by those who dedicated their lives to provide us with knowledge and open our minds.
Hackathon Journey
This has been a phenomenal experience!
Daily we study and try to learn more about engineering, admiring the giants of this field that deal with complex problems, at some point we came to convince ourselves that only a chosen few are capable of working with NASA or other large companies, during this Hackathon we realized that we are all capable of developing solutions and together exploring and increasing our knowledge towards the unknown. We are extremely grateful and happy with our results, we hope that all those who participated in this event feel like us and that those who have doubts about participating, give it a chance because we guarantee that they will not regret it.
References
https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/rover/energy/
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2019_Phase_I_Phase_II/Power_Beaming/
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20110016033/downloads/20110016033.pdf
https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/spacecraft/rover/power/
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/549/energy-storage-technologies-for-future-planetary-science-missions/
https://techport.nasa.gov/view/92914
https://sbir.nasa.gov/SBIR/abstracts/21/sbir/phase1/SBIR-21-1-S3.03-3308.html
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/1519/venus-resources/?page=0&per_page=40&order=created_at+desc&search=&tags=Venus&category=324
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/automaton-rover-for-extreme-environments-aree/
https://www.nasa.gov/exploring-hell-venus-rover-challenge/
https://2019.spaceappschallenge.org/challenges/planets-near-and-far/memory-maker/details
https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/1.41886
https://periodicos.utfpr.edu.br/rts/article/view/9781
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/niac_2019_phi_brandon_powerbeaming_tagged.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S009457652200203X
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576520305695
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/584728main_Wings-ch4b-pgs182-199.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352152X22008556
Resources:
Solidworks;
Videoscribe;
Microsoft tools;
Microsoft one note;
Discord;
Whats app.
Tags
#balloon, #wind, #battery, #graphene, #lithium, #innovation, #titanium.