Overview of the Avionics Design for the Farside Seismic Suite

The Farside Seismic Suite (FSS) was selected for flight on the NASA mission planned for flight in 2025 to the Schrödinger Crater on the farside of Earth’s moon. The primary instruments are two seismometers: the vertical Very BroadBand seismometer and the Short Period, a triaxial sensor. Both have heritage from the InSight mission to Mars. FSS has the following three science objectives: 1) investigate deep lunar structure and the difference between near and farside activity, 2) understand how the lunar crust is affected by the development of an impact melt basin, and 3) evaluate the current micrometeorite impact rate and local tectonic activity. FSS is packaged as a self-sufficient payload on the NASA CP-12 Draper lander; FSS has independent power, command and data handling, communications, and thermal control. The mission will operate over four lunar day/night cycles (four Earth months). This presents an extremely harsh thermal environment with communication relay constraints lacking direct line of sight to Earth. FSS avionics are adapted from the MarCO 6U CubeSat. The flight computer is used with no modifications. The electrical power system is modified for higher power solar panels. A custom interface board adapts MarCO avionics to FSS systems.