Melt Stage Controller

Embedded Controller with Temperature Coordination

The Melt Stage Controller is an embedded software and avionics unit within the lunar water processing chain that coordinates heater power, pump flow, and freeze-protection cycles. Operating at a one-hertz control loop rate, it employs PID and feedforward logic to balance melt rates against downstream demand and prevent tank overflow. Because the lunar surface lacks a protective magnetosphere, the controller resides on rad-hard NOR flash within a radiation-tolerant microcontroller or FPGA host. Consuming one watt with a 500,000-hour mean time between failures, the system incorporates threshold-based freeze protection with hysteresis and automatically halts heating while isolating reservoirs during faults.

Embedded controller coordinating heater power, pump flow, and freeze-protection cycle.