This all takes place inside the glove box and a vacuum chamber to avoid exposing dangerous chemicals to open air. (An electrolyte is the solution inside a battery that transfers ions between the positive and negative terminals.) They then build the battery cell using little metal cell casings that look like the battery you might find in your wristwatch. The batteries that Robinson and Wang are researching and testing could pave the way for improved energy-storing technologies that are more robust in extreme space-like conditions as well as safer and longer lasting even here on Earth, with potential applications ranging from electric vehicles to grid-scale energy storage.Īnd what does building and testing batteries actually look like?įirst, the students synthesize mixtures of chemicals in the glove box to fabricate a novel battery electrolyte. While current battery technologies, primarily lithium-based, have advanced significantly in efficiency and performance in recent decades, they face certain constraints, including resource scarcity, safety concerns, and performance limitations. By doing so, they strengthen their scientific rigor and communication skills.” Importantly, they must present and defend their work to the JPL team members. They're doing experiments, generating data, and interpreting the data as a scientist would. “They are being treated on these projects just like the other team members. “They are right in the middle of cutting-edge battery research,” says Will West, the group supervisor of the Electrochemical Research, Technology, & Engineering, who oversees the interns' work with Jones. Robinson and Wang are focused on the Europa Lander and Venus Aerobot mission concepts - building batteries, performing testing, analyzing data, and meeting with their JPL colleagues to present and defend their work. Learn about internship opportunities at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and apply today! “So we've tried to make sure that their projects align with something that's mission related.” He is also the cognizant engineer facilitating the development of batteries for two projects - a lander designed to retrieve samples from Mars and a system of self-guided robots known as CADRE. Jones is a battery technologist in the Electrochemical Research, Technology & Engineering Group. “I really wanted to make sure that the students had an opportunity to contribute to something meaningful,” says the interns’ JPL mentor, John-Paul Jones, who helped develop the JPL-MIRO-CCNY internship program. students to JPL to put their minds to work solving problems that are of consequence to actual JPL missions and projects. Hands on Hardware, Minds on Missionsįrom its inception, this collaborative internship program between JPL, MIRO, and CCNY’s Center for Advanced Batteries for Space, now in its third year, sought to bring highly-capable Ph.D. That internship opportunity was the product of a collaboration that spans 3,000 miles and three organizations - JPL, CCNY, and NASA’s MIRO program. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | + Expand image Wang connects battery cells to a potentiastat machine to cycle and collect data. “I don't think that I could have gotten a better opportunity anywhere else, working under brilliant scientists,” Wang says. students at The City College of New York, studying chemical engineering with a concentration on the development of advanced battery technologies for space - getting their hands on this equipment in a NASA laboratory is as good as it gets. As electricity hums through this web of hardware, data pours into a series of computers, filling spreadsheets that wait to be analyzed.įor Robinson and Wang - both Ph.D. These gloves, inside out and ready to be fitted onto human arms, are connected to a “glove box” - a glass case filled with what looks like pharmaceutical bottles and the metal chemical canisters of a cartoon mad scientist.īeyond the glove boxes, a sinuous tangle of cables cascades over the edge of a desk, winding between battery cell prototypes and a potentiostat, an electronic device that measures the current and voltage cycled through the batteries. The lab greets visitors with hands: four arm-length inflated rubber gloves extend as if to grab something. Gloves extend from a "glove box" where battery electrolytes are fabricated.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |