The system is designed to reduce the boiling from Crio to Zero
NASA has tested a kind of super-refrigerator that can be the key to any future manned mission to Mars. With the new cryogenic refrigerator, a ship that goes to Mars no longer arrives with empty fuel deposits.
The idea of putting astronauts on Mars has several decades; And today, more than ever, it is taken very seriously in certain quadrants. However, as the saying goes, “the devil is in the details.”
It is one thing to conceive of a vehicle to get to Mars, their engines, life support systems, sensors, navigation instruments and so on – so far, all ok.
But it is in the “details” that the big problem arises: Where is the fuel needed to bring astronauts to Mars and bring them back?
For example, if the Mars ship has a large, slightly isolated tank with 38 tons of liquid hydrogen, it is estimated that passive boiling would cost about 16 tons per year. That is, the mission to Mars would see the crew arrive at its destination without the fuel needed to return home.
Now, on the sidelines of the cryogenic fluid management project, it is creating a state -of -the -art active isolation and cooling system that aims Evaporation zero over months and even years, as well as improved systems to handle cryogenic fuels without losses.
At NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, the engineers installed the so -called two -phase cooling system in a three -month rehearsal bench.
Also designated by Cooling “Tube in the tank”this system consists of two cooling circuits inserted in a thick metallized isolation and a thermal shield.
In the primary cooling circuit, tubes full of cooled liquid helium to -253 ° C (-424 ° F) are wrapped around the cryogenic propeller tank to cool it directly and its content.
As it details A, above this are isolation layers and a second circuit that carries a slightly warmer helium, to -183 ° C (-298 ° F), placed behind the thermal shield that covers the entire set. This circuit interceives and rejects all the heat that enters before it can penetrate more.
The result is a system that can maintain super-refrigerated thrusters indefinitelyas long as there is energy to make Cry-Refrigeration machinery operate.
This means not only to avoid the embarrassment of appearing on Mars without a ride home, but also the ability to dispense with unnecessary fuel surpluses and planning longer missions.
