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Pauken, Michael

Publications and source records attributed to Pauken, Michael.

At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2022

Exploring the Clouds of Venus: Science Driven Aerobot Missions to Our Sister Planet

Venus is essential to our understanding of the evolution and habitability of Earth-size planets throughout the galaxy. The selection of the VERITAS, EnVision, and DAVINCI missions by NASA and ESA in June 2021 is an important step in advancing the science. However, addressing many of the most challenging questions will require in situ platforms that can operate in the Venus environment for extended periods in order to capture the full complexity of our sister planet. Aerobots are aerial vehicles that exploit buoyancy to achieve long-duration operation in the Venus cloud layer where environmental conditions are comparatively benign. Buoyancy control, explained in more detail in a companion paper at this conference, allows aerobots to change altitude with little energy expenditure enabling new scientific measurement opportunities. These include atmospheric chemistry, dynamics, geophysical measurements of the crust and interior and geological investigations enabled by high resolution surface imaging. One aspect to our approach to defining missions that fit within the resource constraints of competitive missions is keeping the scale small. Today’s science-driven appetite for sophisticated measurements and large volumes of data is driving size upwards but advances in technology can enable aerobots that can be delivered to Venus at manageable costs. The other aspect is supporting the aerobot at Venus with orbiters providing data relay, localization and synergistic science. The recently selected orbiters, equipped with low-cost proximity relay systems routinely used at Mars may obviate the need for dedicated orbiters thereby enabling Discovery mission candidates. Four aerobot mission concepts have been defined which fit comfortably within the current New Frontiers (NF) cost cap ($900M in $FY22). One of these concepts would also be a candidate for a Discovery mission if that cost cap ($500M in $FY19) were raised. Raising the NF cost cap would enable more capable aerobot missions combining both altitude control with synergistic orbital observations. Investigations of surface geology at high resolution with subcloud NIR nightside imaging and dropsondes on the dayside of Venus could also benefit from collaborations with foreign contributions.

"O'Rourke, Joseph"↗
NASA NTRS2020

Thermal system and environmental testing of the Mars Helicopter

The Mars Helicopter will be a technology demonstration conducted during the Mars 2020 mission. The primary mission objective is to achieve several 90-second flights demonstrating the feasibility of heavier than air flight on Mars and capture visible light images via forward and nadir mounted cameras. These flights could possibly provide reconnaissance data for sampling site selection for other Mars surface missions. A solar array and batteries for flight operations, imaging, communications, and survival heating power the Helicopter. The thermal design is driven by minimizing survival heater energy while maintaining compliance with allowable flight temperatures in a variable thermal environment. Due to the small size of the Helicopter and its complex geometries, along with the fact that it operates with very low power and small margins in the extreme Mars environment, additional care had to be paid while planning thermal tests and designing the thermal system. The first section of the paper describes the evolution of the thermal system of the Mars Helicopter. After the first thermal vacuum test of the engineering model, the thermal team has conducted a partial effect analysis on the thermal design components that had a major impact on the system performance. Several design choices derived by analysis and test have been made to meet the energy allocation and the temperature requirements. These changes included increased gas gaps to reduce gas conduction, low emissivity coatings for internal components, blanket implementation, optimization of wire routing and fine-tuning of surface operations to optimize waste heat recovery. The second part of the paper describes the flight model thermal vacuum test and the subsequent thermal model correlation necessary to confirm the fidelity of the analysis results.

Pauken, Michael↗
NASA NTRS2019

BALLET: Balloon Locomotion for Extreme Terrain: NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) - Phase I Final Report

This report documents the work performed in our investigation into the BALLET (Balloon Locomotion for Extreme Terrain) concept. We focused on four areas in this Phase I effort. They were 1) identifying the science targets and objectives with the corresponding requisite instrumentation and operational capabilities that could be achieved with a BALLET mission, 2) developing an architecture for the deployment and operation of this concept for a future mission to a planetary body, 3) analyzing a parametric physical model of BALLET under the environmental conditions of Mars, Titan and Earth to determine its feasibility, and 4) developing and demonstrating coordinated control of the BALLET mobility system to enable locomotion over rugged terrain. The results of our investigations in these focus areas are documented in the following sections. A paper summarizing the preliminary results from this study has been accepted for publication and presentation at the 2019 IEEE Aerospace Conference [Nayar, 2019].

Balloon Locomotion↗
NASA NTRS2018

SAEVe (Seismic and Atmospheric Exploration of Venus): A Long-Lived Lander Concept for Venus

Many crucial geophysical and atmospheric science investigations at Venus require operations on the surface for an entire solar day. Until recently this was not achievable, but new developments in high temperature electronics have now made months long operations on the Venus surface possible even with smallsat class missions. Here we describe a study of a long-lived Venus lander called SAEVe, for Seismic and Atmospheric Exploration of Venus: this was one of the concepts selected in 2017 under NASA's Planetary Science Deep Space SmallSat Studies (PSDS3) call.

lander concept↗
NASA NTRS2017

SAEVe: A Long Duration Small Sat Class Venus Lander - Seismic and Atmospheric Exploration of Venus

NASA's science mission directorate has put increasing emphasis on innovative, smaller, and lower cost missions to achieve their science objectives. One example of this was the recent call by the Planetary Science Division for cube and small satellite concepts expected to cost $100M or less, not including launch and weighing less than 180kg. Over 100 proposals were submitted suggesting that indeed this is a size of mission worthy of being considered in future planning. Nineteen missions were selected for study, one being a long-lived Venus mission called SAEVe, for Seismic and Atmospheric Exploration of Venus. The science objectives and relevance of SAEVe include: Is Venus seismically active? What can we learn about its crust (thickness and composition) and its interior (lithosphere, mantle, and core)? What can be learned about its evolutionary history or about the planet / atmosphere interactions? SAEVe begins to address these science questions with simple, but capable, instrumented probes that can survive on the surface of Venus and take temporal measurements over months something never attempted before. The data returned will further our understanding of the solar system and Earth, and aid in meeting the NASA Science Plan goal to ascertain the content, origin, and evolution of the solar system and the chemical and physical processes in our solar system. SAEVe is delivered to Venus as a ride-along on another mission to Venus. Its two small probes are placed into the Venus atmosphere via a single Stardust-like entry capsule, are ejected at different times, free fall, and decelerate in the thickening atmosphere to touchdown under 8 m/s2 or less. The probes will begin taking measurements and transmitting important parameters at or near the surface and will focus on measurements like seismic activity, heat flux, wind speed and direction, basic chemical abundances, temperature, and pressure. At preset intervals, the probes acquire the science measurements and beam the data to the orbiting host spacecraft. SAEVe will serve as a highly capable precursor and pave the way for larger and more complex lander missions to explore Venus.

lander↗