Miniature peristaltic pump Technology and applications

Abstract

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a NASA Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC). It is endowed with NASA equipment that is managed and staffed by California Institute of Technology with a highly educated and world-class community of six thousand engineers and scientists. JPL's principal NASA responsibility is to design, build, test and operate robotic spacecraft for the exploration of the solar system and to observe our universe across the whole EMR spectrum. Essentially, to go where no one has gone before and, in doing so, determine the origins of our solar system and the universe. The days of large, multi-instrumented, billion-dollar robotic spacecraft are over. The emphasis is now on miniaturizing instruments and spacecraft and reducing the costs of fabrication, test, launch and operation. The ramifications of miniaturization are global, encompassing every element of a spacecraft, instrument, lander or penetrator Micro pumps, valves and flow meters were conceived to address the variety of fluid flow control elements. This paper discusses the evolution of this technology from other MEMS programs and presents a variety of space' applications.