Barchowsky, Ansel, Amirahmadi, Ahmadreza, Santillan, Diego, Burkic, Andy, Loveland, Jessica, Lui, Autumn, Rapinchuk, Jaqueline, Freitas, Louis, Stell, Chris, Carpenter, Kalind, Mahmud, Sadab, Collings, William, Kini, Roshan, Javaid, Ahmad, Khanna, Raghav, and Zapien, Xavier
In the pursuit for the development of small rovers for planetary science missions, there is a distinct need for the development of an advanced, autonomously controlled, power subsystem. Existing bus management systems used in large spacecraft missions are not suitable for small spacecraft missions, as they are massive, relatively inefficient, and expensive. For extremely compact rover mission concept, newly developed high-density, high-efficiency, lightweight, and low-cost electronics are required. This paper presents a radiation-hardened power subsystem for the Pop-Up Flat-Folding Explorer Robot (PUFFER) mission concept, utilizing GaN-based converters for solar array conversion, battery management, and point of load applications to provide an extremely compact power subsystem.