DuPont products go to Mars and beyond high-tech materials enable Spirit and Opportunity Rovers

Citation

(2004), "DuPont products go to Mars and beyond high-tech materials enable Spirit and Opportunity Rovers", Pigment & Resin Technology, Vol. 33 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/prt.2004.12933cad.010

DuPont products go to Mars and beyond high-tech materials enable Spirit and Opportunity Rovers

DuPont products go to Mars and beyond high-tech materials enable Spirit and Opportunity Rovers

Keywords: Materials, Electronically operated devices, Technology-led strategy

Opportunity has landed. Since the birth of manned space flight more than four decades back, DuPont has been along for the ride with products essential for lighter weight, reduced volume, durability and environmental resistance. Today's Mars exploration rovers – Spirit and Opportunity – are enabled by materials from DuPont Electronic Technologies.

Consumers will find the same DuPont technologies enabling cell phones, plasma display panels, personal digital assistants (PDAs), video camcorders, laptop computers and digital cameras, among others. DuPont electronic materials make these products smaller and more durable, while allowing them to do more, faster and better.

These high-tech materials provide the same solutions so that today's rovers have more space for additional scientific payload.

The Mars rovers currently in space include almost 70 yards each of flexible cable circuits made of thin DuPont^® Pyralux^® laminates and composites. By replacing bulky round wires and cables, these materials can provide a volume savings of between 60 and 70 per cent. Stacked, they would total less than 1.5 in. Pyralux^® flexible circuits connect the “brain” of the rovers to their parts – the robotic arm, cameras, high gain antenna, wheels and sensors.

Pressure-sensitive tape made of DuPonte Kapton^® polyimide film is used throughout the rovers to control vibration. Pyralux^® flexible cables secured with Kapton^® tape offer durable, lightweight environmental resistance for the temperatures on Mars, ranging from -120°C (-184°F) to 22°C (72°F).

Hundreds of Kapton^® strip heaters are used throughout the rovers for thermal control, ensuring critical warmth needed to maintain operations in the extremely cold martian atmosphere. Traditional copper wires and cables have large conductors that can easily allow heat to escape from the rover electronics module, threatening a shortened mission life. Kapton^® strip heaters significantly reduce that risk and allow the rovers to use smaller solar panels and batteries.

The cameras beaming clear, high resolution signals back to Earth can do so in part because the Pyralux^® flexible circuits were made using Riston^® dry film photoresists and ImageMastere phototooling films that provide reliable fine-line circuit images, ensuring consistent quality signals and performance.

“The technology that helps meet the challenges we face today starts with high-performance materials from DuPont,” said David B. Miller, Vice-President and General Manager, DuPont Electronic Technologies. “Our materials have enabled manned and unmanned missions into space by providing key benefits, including significant volume and weight savings in addition to bend and twist flexibility. That's the same trend you can see and feel in everyday products like lighter, thinner cell phones, yet these smaller, more advanced electronics are much more powerful.”

In addition to the rovers, satellites orbiting Earth today provide clear communications because of thin, lightweight and durable Pyralux^® flexible circuits.

Kapton^® film works with layers of DuPonte Teflon^® fluoropolymer resin and Pyralux^® flexible cables to provide power from the Rover Electronics Module to the hardware components in the rovers. The flexible joints of the robotic arm, which must withstand repeated bending in extreme environments, use Kapton^® and Pyralux^®. Kapton^® strip heaters are wrapped around each of the motors on the robotic arm to keep the motors and gearboxes running at optimum temperature and efficiency.

Metallized Kapton^® is used in thermal shielding for heat-sensitive components. The airbags, so critical to the rovers' successful landings, are threaded and reinforced with DuPonte Kevlar^® brand fiber.

Other DuPont inventions have contributed to space exploration. On Apollo missions to the Moon, 20 out of the 21 layers in each space suit were made with DuPont materials, including nylon, Dacron^® polyester fiber, Mylar^® polyester film, neoprene and Kapton^®. Today's suits include fewer layers but many of the same products, in addition to Nomex^® and Kevlar^® branded fibers. Kevlar^® also was used on the Galileo probe to Jupiter, which included a parachute made of Kevlar^®, and at the International Space Station, where a blanket made of Kevlar^® was used to wrap its inner walls to protect from micrometeorites. In addition, the Space Station's wings used Kapton^® to absorb UV rays.

DuPont Electronic Technologies is a leading supplier of electronic materials, including printed circuit materials, high-performance and microcircuit materials, semiconductor fabrication materials and IC packaging and interconnects.