Rover

The Rover Module (RM) architecture will be developed around its objective as a scientific and commercial cargo platform and it is defined by its main systems. The mobility system is responsible for propelling the rover, traversing obstacles, and climbing/descending slopes. The team has early iterated with non-wheeled rovers but finally the baseline design will be similar to other common planetary rover designs with 6 wheels The communications system is responsible for sending Mooncasts, systems health, navigation information and any other mission data from the Moon down to Earth. It is also responsible for sending commands and any other mission data from Earth up to the Moon. The communications architecture include a high rate downlink for delivering payload data, a low rate downlink for delivering systems health information and to serve as a backup in case of failure of the high rate link, a high rate cross link between the rover and lander, and a low rate uplink for sending commands to the rover and lander from the ground stations. The power subsystem is responsible for power generation, storage, management and distribution. A baseline design with a combination of solar arrays and batteries is assumed to be the simplest and most effective combination. The rover is assumed to have three different operating modes: peak, nominal and standby. It is also assumed that for the various modes, certain components would never be operating at the same time.