Compact Vacuum Pump for Titan Lander Missions

For a number of years Creare has developed, fabricated, and tested highly miniaturized, high vacuum pumps specifically designed for mass spectrometers used on NASA Mars missions. These pumps would also be useful on other missions to planets and satellites with atmosphere, such as Titan, as well as terrestrial applications on Earth. In order to allow these high vacuum pumps to operate in high-pressure environments such as exist on Titan and Earth, the vacuum pump needs to be supplemented with a rough pump that can take its exhaust and compress it to 11.5 atm. This project aims to design, fabricate, test, and deliver such a compact vacuum pump system that can generate a high vacuum, on the order of 1e-8 torr, and exhaust directly to an Earth or Titan atmosphere. The pump will be assembled in a very compact, robust, and low-power package. Our Phase I project clearly demonstrated the feasibility of our innovative design by demonstrating the performance of a rough pump and designing a compact vacuum system for use on Earth or other planetary bodies with atmospheric pressure greater than 1 atm. During Phase II of this project, we will build a complete benchtop pumping system that meets the requirements.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.