* Astronomy

A high-tech refrigeration system could keep a rover functioning for weeks on the searingly hot surface of Venus, say NASA researchers. A long-lived Venus rover could help scientists understand why Venus, with its runaway greenhouse effect, has become so different from Earth.

The surface of Venus broils at a temperature of about 450 °C hot enough to melt lead. Several probes in the Soviet Venera and Vega series, as well as a NASA Pioneer Venus probe, landed on Venus and returned data from the surface in the 1970s and early 1980s. But they all expired in less than 2 hours because of the tremendous heat.
Now, two NASA researchers have designed a refrigeration system that might be able to keep a robotic rover going for as long as 50 Earth days. The work was carried out by Geoffrey Landis and Kenneth Mellott of NASA's Glenn Research Centre in Cleveland, Ohio, US.
The main concern is keeping the electronics cool. The NASA pair plan to do this by packing the electronics in a ceramic-based insulator and placing it inside a metal sphere about the size of a grapefruit.
Heat would then be pumped out of the sphere using a Stirling cooler, which works by compressing and then expanding a gas with a piston.

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