Materials for Venus Probe
Date: Fall 2011
If you were to send a probe to the surface of Venus, which materials could be used to withstand its intense pressure?
While a well designed housing in many common materials can
withstand intense pressure, the surface temperature of 460°C on
Venus, does present a challenge for suitable materials. Clearly,
aluminum and its alloys are unable to withstand this temperature, but
many common metals and alloys are. Examples of metals able to
withstand this temperature are plain ordinary steel, many ordinary
stainless steel alloys, as well as some of the more exotic cobalt/nickel
alloys such as "Inconel".
The real challenge, however, is not designing the structure of the
probe to withstand Venus' high temperature. The real difficulty is to
design a way to protect its sensitive instruments from this temperature.
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Update: June 2012