OUR CHALLENGE

The challenge we must meet is to design an energy storage system that will power a surface lander or rover, on the surface of Venus for at least 60 days, so that long- term exploration missions will be feasible.

OUR PROBELM

Venus is a planet with a very hostile enviroment with extremely high temperatures, reaching up to 475 degrees celcius, an atomosphereic pressure 90 times greater of that of earth and an extremely toxic armosphere making missions extremely dangerous, and not enabling our usual energy storages to work.

OUR SOLUTION

For our project we designed an energy source and storage system for a Venus surface lander using in situ resources such as solar power and sulfuric acid from the clouds. We used the very reactive sulfuric acid to our advantage, manufacturing hydrogen on an aerial station which would charge its batteries above the clouds and descend to transfer it to the rover. For the energy storage system we propose a molten salt electrolyte battery, which has a high temperature range, with a strong aerogel insulation. In order to protect the battery from the extreme pressure, it has to be pressurized from the inside.