Overview of the Upcoming RadPC-Lunar Mission

This paper describes the mission concept for “RadPC-Lunar”, a technology demonstration of a novel computer architecture that can recover from faults caused by ionizing radiation. RadPC-Lunar is a payload that was selected by NASA in 2019 to go to the Moon through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) project as part of the Artemis lunar program. RadPC-Lunar will travel to the lunar surface in 2022–23 onboard a commercial lander and will spend a minimum of 7-days in the Mare Crisium. This demonstration will serve two important purposes in support of future lunar missions. First, it will demonstrate a key technology for computationally intense autonomous lunar activities such as in situ resource utilization, robotic surface operations, and entry/descent/landing maneu-verers while providing increased reliability over the state-of-the-art in space computers. Second, it will provide a characterization of the radiation effects environment of the lunar surface by tracking upsets within the computing fabric and correlating them to data from on-board dosimeters. The payload can also provide a unique set of measurements on the ionizing radiation environment as it passes through the Earth's magnetosphere during transit to the Moon. This paper describes the overall mission concept of RadPC-Lunar in addition to the details of the design-of-experiments and the types of data that will be collected. This paper will be of interest to engineers and scientists studying the lunar transit and lunar surface radiation environment and those working with radiation tolerant avionics. The timing of the presentation will allow the RadPC-Lunar team to solicit feedback from the aerospace community that can influence its design-of-experiments prior to completion in order to maximize the return of the mission.