{"id":112710,"date":"2020-09-08T07:23:36","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T14:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/nasas-new-metallic-glass-gears-can-withstand-impact-freezing-temperatures-during-lunar-missions"},"modified":"2020-09-08T07:23:36","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T14:23:36","slug":"nasas-new-metallic-glass-gears-can-withstand-impact-freezing-temperatures-during-lunar-missions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/nasas-new-metallic-glass-gears-can-withstand-impact-freezing-temperatures-during-lunar-missions","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s New \u201cMetallic Glass\u201d Gears Can Withstand Impact, Freezing Temperatures During Lunar Missions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/nasas-new-metallic-glass-gears-can-withstand-impact-freezing-temperatures-during-lunar-missions2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Many exploration destinations in our solar system are frigid and require hardware that can withstand the extreme cold. During NASA \u2019s Artemis missions, temperatures at the Moon\u2019s South Pole will drop drastically during the lunar night. Farther into the solar system, on Jupiter \u2019s moon Europa, temperatures never rise above &minus;260 degrees Fahrenheit (&minus;162 degrees Celsius) at the equator.<\/p>\n<p>One NASA project is developing special gears that can withstand the extreme temperatures experienced during missions to the Moon and beyond. Typically, in extremely low temperatures, gears \u2013 and the housing in which they\u2019re encased, called a gearbox \u2013 are heated. After heating, a lubricant helps the gears function correctly and prevents the steel alloys from becoming brittle and, eventually, breaking. NASA\u2019s Bulk Metallic Glass Gears (BMGG) project team is creating material made of \u201cmetallic glass\u201d for gearboxes that can function in and survive extreme cold environments without heating, which requires energy. Operations in cold and dim or dark environments are currently limited due to the amount of available power on a rover or lander.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many exploration destinations in our solar system are frigid and require hardware that can withstand the extreme cold. During NASA \u2019s Artemis missions, temperatures at the Moon\u2019s South Pole will drop drastically during the lunar night. Farther into the solar system, on Jupiter \u2019s moon Europa, temperatures never rise above \u2212260 degrees Fahrenheit (\u2212162 degrees [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}