Preliminary mechanical design of GrainCams payload for the CLPS lunar rover

GrainCams is a lunar rover payload designed to explore lunar dust. It is a suite of two light field cameras: SurfCam and LevCam. The main goal of SurfCam is to provide 3D imaging of fairy castle structures believed to exist on the lunar surface. LevCam’s objective is to understand dust speed and track the trail of lofting dust on the lunar surface. The mechanical stiffness of the camera is capable of enduring the vibration and shock conditions of the launcher. Thus, we conducted the opto-mechanical design for Surfam and analyzed the safety through theoretical estimation. The safety of whole structure is also reviewed from structural analysis such as linear static analysis and modal analysis. These cameras will operate in the extreme temperature of the moon. To achieve a viable thermal design despite the extreme lunar thermal environment and uncertainty of the payload interface with the rover, we assumed a thermal adiabatic payload interface and employed passive (e.g., thermal insulation blankets (MLIs), surface control of thermal radiation, specially designed radiators with an inclination angle of 36.5° to effectively avoid Solar flux and maximize unobstructed view of space relative to the lunar surface in hot cases) and active (e.g., heaters) thermal control techniques. Each camera should weigh no more than 5 kg and consume no more than 20 W of power. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of the structure design of GrainCams.