ABSTRACT
Extreme environment electronics’ systems are by definition low-volume, but high value–add propositions, and hence can be extremely expensive to deploy. Unmanned lunar missions necessarily combine mobility on the lunar surface with sensing functions, electronics, and motor/actuators for control on that rover. Temperature is one of nature’s key system variables in the behavior of matter, and as such it has long been used to explore the electronic, optical, magnetic, and thermal properties of various materials. The impact of the various types of radiation on electronic devices, circuits, and systems is many and varied and consists of ionization effects, atomic displacement effects, and a wide variety of single event effects. The sensor/actuator networks on such a lunar rover provide a distributed system to monitor the health and performance of the rover in order to sense the environment for scientific exploration or to act on the environment, for example, by using a drill to obtain a soil sample for water analysis.
