Heating a Venus Probe at the Pace of Its Own Descent

An engineering model of NASA's DAVINCI descent probe passed a test running from Aug. 28 to Sept. 10, showing the design can survive the extreme temperatures of Venus. The heat was ratcheted up to 465 C over about an hour — the same pace the probe itself will heat up during its descent to the surface. The pace is the point. A chamber that simply jumped to the peak temperature would test the materials against a destination; ramping the heat on the same schedule as the real descent tests them against the trip. Venus is a place a probe survives on a clock, so the test has to run on one too.