As NASA eyes future missions to the Moon and Mars, two Vanderbilt School of Engineering research teams have received federal grants to investigate some of the toughest engineering problems in space exploration: protecting electronics from radiation exposure and delivering large amounts of power reliably in the harsh space environment.
The projects, led by faculty from the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering, are designed to make components more resilient and efficient when operating in space.
One team, headed by researchers James Trippe, Robert Reed, and Sankaran Mahadevan, is part of a multi-university effort funded by more than $5.4 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to protect electronics against disruptions or damage caused by high-energy space radiation.
The “Center for Advancing the Radiation Resilience of Electronics (CARRE)” project—comprised of six partner universities and led by Oregon State University—will use physics-informed, simulation modeling to evaluate the impact of radiation effects on the performance of advanced microelectronic- and nanophotonic-based space systems. These tools can help engineers quickly and accurately evaluate designs—without requiring highly specialized expertise.
“Accurate simulation of radiation effects in cutting-edge devices requires new approaches to handle transport at nanometer scales,” said Trippe, research assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the deputy director of CARRE.
Added Mahadevan, “the CARRE project is also developing methods to address many factors that cause uncertainty in the prediction of radiation effects, such as radiation variability, measurements, and modeling approximations.”
Another project, led by Research Professor Steven Kosier, will receive more than $3.8 million from NASA to improve the stability of power delivery and distribution systems in outer space, where high levels of radiation may cause catastrophic electrical failures.
The research, “Silicon Carbide for High Voltage in Radiation Environments (SHIRE)” aims to develop new power devices that can operate at much higher voltages—up to 1,500 volts—while withstanding intense radiation in the space environment, a key factor for NASA’s future “Moon-to-Mars” programs: Fission Surface Power (FSP), Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP), and Space Nuclear Propulsion (SNP).
“The SHiRE project targets a hard physical limit in space systems: delivering and managing large amounts of power under intense radiation without failure,” Kosier said. “If you can safely push the space system voltage higher, you get step-function gains in efficiency, mass, and overall system capability, which translate into longer missions, more science, and more practical infrastructure in space.”