MoonRanger’s custom electronics take the form of a half dozen printed circuit boards that conform to CubeSatKit-standard dimensions. All these boards and mountings stack into the structural mounting system designated as a ‘LOAF’ in MoonRanger’s design. Read more about the mounting of electronic boards here. This assembly integrates pseudo-boards and pseudo-batteries with correct geometry and … Continued

MoonRanger’s Power Switching Board is a printed circuit board that distributes and switches power to components such as the computers, motor controllers and sun sensor. In the event of a device or board failure, the switching can attempt to restore functionality by power cycling. If unrecoverable, the affected device can be powered down by the … Continued

All commands and data to and from MoonRanger are conveyed via Wi-Fi when it is within radio range of its lander. For redundancy, it matters that both MoonRanger’s computers have independent means of Wi-Fi to the lander. The Wi-Fi chip on the autonomy computer (TX2i) facilitates most of the direct-to-lander comm. The simpler, more hardened … Continued

MoonRanger’s motor control board incorporates five of the individual motor control modules. These are coordinated by the space-grade microcontroller (the gray square component in the upper left) that commands the speed, direction and motion duration of each. Four controllers drive the wheels in this way. The fifth raises or lowers the solar array.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrEBQpYZa-QThis video illustrates … Continued

MoonRanger’s radiation viability is achieved via component selection, shielding, short mission duration, testing, error correction and monitoring. Some components, including power management, primary and watchdog computers, accelerometer, and intelligent battery are selected for radiation tolerance, prior rad testing, or space heritage. Shielding is utilised for critical components that lack space heritage and boards developed by … Continued