Exploring Hell: NASA launches challenge to help clockwork rover avoid obstacles on Venus

NASA has launched a very specific challenge to help them “explore hell.”

They are in need of a special sensor to help their clockwork rover avoid obstacles on one of the hottest planets in our solar system: Venus.

A handful of probes have visited the “ancient sister of Earth” since the early days of space flight, with only a few able to function for a couple of hours before succumbing to the oppressive heat and pressure.

Despite those conditions, landers were able to deliver some important information such as the planet’s surface temperature (in excess of 450 degrees Celcius), a surface pressure 92 times that of Earth, wind speeds of 0.3 to 1.3 meters per second and the length of a Venusian day (116 Earth days.)

Now, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is studying a mission concept to return to Venus known as the Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE). This has not been accomplished since the Soviet Vega 2 landed in 1985.

“Current, state-of-the-art, military-grade electronics fail at approximately 125°C, so mission scientists at JPL have taken their design cues from a different source: automatons and clockwork operations,” NASA says.

The AREE is intended to spend months exploring the landscape and collecting valuable long-term longitudinal scientific data using indirect and direct sensors.

As the rover explores the surface of Venus, collecting and relaying data to an orbiter overhead, it must also detect obstacles in its path like rocks, crevices, and steep terrain. To assist AREE on its groundbreaking mission concept, JPL needs an equally groundbreaking obstacle avoidance sensor, one that does not rely on vulnerable electronic systems. For that reason, JPL is turning to the global community of innovators and inventors to design this novel avoidance sensor for AREE. JPL is interested in all approaches, regardless of technical maturity.

JPL has issued a challenge to the global community in search of a sensor that would detect and navigate through dangerous situations during its operational life. It would need to sense obstacles such as rocks, crevices and inclines, successfully navigating around the obstruction, enabling the rover to continue to explore and collect more data.

“While the mission to the surface of Venus may be years off, the development of a suitably robust rover sensor will strengthen the case for returning to Venus with a rover, something that has never been attempted before,” NASA says.

So what can you do?

• Click here to sign up for the challenge
• Read the Challenge Guidelines to learn about the requirements and rules.
• Share the challenge
• Start a conversation in the forum, or join an existing conversation, ask questions and connect with other innovators.

The winner of the challenge, named “Exploring Hell: Avoiding Obstacles on a Clockwork Rover,” will receive a prize of $30,000.

For more information about the challenge, click here.