← Back to NASA Technology Projects
Completed TRL 6 (started at 3, targeting 6)
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.
Numerous commercial applications exist for the proposed compact vacuum pump, primarily to support portable analytical instruments such as mass spectrometers and leak detectors. Current-generation devices are limited by the size and mass of their high vacuum and rough pumps, or else use less capable absorption pumps. Building a small, low mass, low-cost, and low-power high vacuum pump whose performance is tuned to the needs of miniature detectors and can exhaust to greater than 1 atmosphere is expected to greatly expand the market for such devices. The pump technology to be developed under this proposal will be used in instruments being developed by some of our partners in portable mass spectrometers for use by the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
The pumping system developed during this project is tailored to provide the vacuum necessary for a number of instruments, notably miniature mass spectrometers, leak detectors, miniature electron microscopes, etc. Such instruments are of scientific interest on future missions (e.g., to Titan), for Earth atmospheric sampling, for volcano emission monitoring, for ISS environmental monitoring, and for numerous other missions.
Listed on TechPort itself — the most direct way to ask about this specific project.
This is early/mid-stage (TRL 6) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.
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.