NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity touched down on Mars last night after an eight-and-a half-month flight from the Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida.
Larger than previous rovers, the compact-car-sized vehicle was lowered to the Martian surface by a sky crane mounted on a delivery vehicle that hovered over the landing site on retro rockets.
As Curiosity begins its journey across the red planet's surface, searching for signs of sustained microbial life, its sensitive wiring will be protected from the Martian environment's radiation, harsh temperature swings and electromagnetic interference by DUNMORE Corporation's high-performance thin films.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory used a special reinforced tape created by DUNMORE to insulate all of the wiring inside the Mars rover. The insulating tape ensures the electrical currents from the rover's different systems don't interfere with each other and impede the rover's operation.
DUNMORE created the tape by combining DuPont™ Kapton® polyimide film with a 3M adhesive and fiberglass reinforcement layer. TheDUNMORE tape is the only multi-layer insulation (MLI) product on the Mars Rover.
"Getting the rover to Mars was an enormous task. Now it's time for the payoff – the exploration and research. Our insulating tapes will help prevent operational failures as the probe travels around Mars and sends new knowledge back to Earth," said DUNMORE vice president John Jordon.
DUNMORE tapes and insulation blankets have been used in almost every major space program of the last 20 years, including the Space Shuttle program, Hubble Telescope, International Space Station, and NASA's Juno and Aquarius exploratory probes.
With increasing demand from public and private organizations launching satellites into orbit, DUNMORE expects steady growth in space program opportunities, such as supplying MLI to the next-generation GPS III program, which will encompass a minimum of 30 new satellites.
