ABSTRACT

The recent development of aerospace exploration requires systems and circuits that can operate in extreme environments, including wide temperature range, radiation, pressure, and vibration that can easily preclude the use of conventional terrestrial engineering designs suitable only for operation, actuation, and movement under ambient room conditions. Although the moon is relatively close to the earth, the extreme temperature conditions on the lunar surface can still invalidate conventional electronic components and systems for control, sensing, and communication. This is problematic, since the development of modular, expandable, and reconfigurable human and robotics systems for lunar missions clearly requires electronic components and integrated packaged electronics modules which can operate robustly without external thermal control [1,2].