TDA RESEARCH, INC. — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: Z2.01
TDA RESEARCH, INC. — SBIR Phase I award from National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
- Amount
- $125,000
- Agency
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Topic
- Z2.01
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- CO
- Period
- 2017-06-09 → 2017-12-08
Description
A lander on the surface of Venus is heated by the 460 C surface temperature, which, even with the best current designs using passive insulation, cause its electronics to fail in much less than a day. Active cooling concepts are not only exceedingly heavy but also exceedingly inefficient. TDA proposes a new insulation for the exterior of the lander that incorporates heat rejection mechanisms that apparently have not been previously considered for the Venus surface. Our insulation will make use of a flexible material that has been recently developed at TDA, and we will compare it to other potential but brittle insulations. Order-of-magnitude calculations suggest that the lifetime of the lander can be extended from hours to days.