Electrical Power Subsystem
The power subsystem consists of body-mounted solar panels, a 40 Whr Li-Ion battery, and an Electrical Power System (EPS) supplied by AAC Clyde Space. The solar panels collect energy from the sun which is then used to charge batteries. The EPS regulates how power is distributed to the various components as the spacecraft performs different operations. All EPS hardware was selected for its ability to support all spacecraft operations over the course of the mission operations timeline. A power budget was developed using MATLab and STK to visualize the battery level over time based on how often imaging and downlink operations were performed.
Interface Boards
In addition to deriving the power subsystem, the EPS team also developed a set of interface boards which helped to facilitate cable routing and provide additional interfaces that were necessary to integrate all components together. The team designed breakout boards for routing power and data to the FLIR camera and MAI-400 ADCS unit and a primary interface board which was used for interfacing components, charging the spacecraft, and uploading software via a USB port. In addition, during the critical design phase, it was found that the onboard computer did not provide as many data interfaces as were required, which consequently was handled by the interface board in the form of muxing (switching) between components.
All interface boards were designed using KiCad and fabricated by Sunstone Circuits and Oshpark
KiCad - http://www.kicad-pcb.org/
Sunstone Circuits - https://www.sunstone.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw-b7qBRDPARIsADVbUbX-M9BoyYWqOrNkCZ99FBo6JBapzHlBphf8n_K5EQw9PNRn9P1c-ukaAtIDEALw_wcB
Oshpark - https://oshpark.com/