Clockwork automaton images7/22/2023 In this overwhelmingly electronic world, most of us don’t have a proper appreciation for the kinds of things that can be done with mechanical computers. Internal view of the Voskhod spacecraft IMP “Globus” navigation instrument. The Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE) would use clockwork gears and springs and other mechanisms to provide the majority of the rover’s functionality, including power generation, power storage, sensing, locomotion, and even communication: no electronics required. With funding from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, the JPL team wants to see whether it might be possible to build a Venus exploration rover without conventional sensors, computers, or power systems. If the problem is the electronics, why not just get rid of them, and build a mechanical rover instead? Developing such a system would likely cost billions in research and development alone.ĪREE would use clockwork gears and springs and other mechanisms to provide the majority of the rover's functionality, including power generation, sensing, locomotion, and even communication: no electronics required.Ī conventional approach to a Venus rover like this is difficult, expensive, and potentially dangerous, but a team of engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, Calif., have come up with an innovative new idea for exploring the surface of Venus. The majority of ideas for Venus surface exploration have essentially been the same sort of thing that the Soviets did with the Venera probes: Stuffing all the electronics inside of an insulated container hooked up to a stupendously powerful air conditioning system, probably driven by some alarmingly radioactive plutonium-powered Stirling engines. The stifling atmosphere that makes the surface of Venus so inhospitable also does a frustratingly good job of minimizing the amount that we can learn about the surface of the planet from orbit, which is why it would be really, really great to have a robot down there poking around for us. Surface photographs from the Soviet Venera 13 probe, which landed on Venus and operated for just over two hours. And while you can be relieved that the sulfuric acid rain that you’ll find in Venus’ upper atmosphere doesn’t reach the surface, it’s also so dark down there (equivalent to a heavily overcast day here on Earth) that solar power is horrendously inefficient. It’s not just the temperature that makes Venus a particularly nasty place for computers-the pressure at the surface is around 90 atmospheres, equivalent to the pressure 3,000 feet down in Earth’s ocean. The surface temperature on Venus averages 464 ☌ (867 ☏), which is hotter than the surface of Mercury (the closest planet to the sun), and hot enough that conventional electronics simply will not work. On March 1, 1982, the USSR’s Venera 13 probe parachuted to a gentle landing and managed to keep operating for just over two hours by hiding all of its computers inside of a hermetically sealed titanium pressure vessel that was pre-cooled in orbit. The longest amount of time that a spacecraft has survived on the surface of Venus is 127 minutes.
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