I haven't worked on anything related to Mars but have worked on the preliminary design of a camera system for the Artemis Moon mission.
Thermal design can be both surprisingly easy and surprisingly difficult. If the mission profile is cold-biased it's an "easy" matter of judiciously adding heating and insulation (to retain heat). Here "easy" is in quotes because nothing is trivial or truly easy in space.
If you have to deal with temperatures beyond the maximum thermal range of the design, sometimes the "easy" solution (again, in quotes) is to schedule shutdowns or duty cycle around thermal conditions. The power-down storage temperature of most devices is much higher than operating limits. Yes, you would need hardware that can deal with extremes in order to wake everything back up. That's where the rad-hard $300K microprocessors come into the fold.
At the same time, you'd be surprised how well some non-rad hard hardware can do in space. There are imaging satellites that basically use qualified COTS imaging sensors quite successfully.
The case is similar for dealing with radiation. Don't turn things on until you have to and, when you do, if you can, limit operating time to the absolute minimum.
There's a lot more to the art and science of making things for space, of course. Everything out there is actively trying to kill everything you send out there 100% of the time.
Thermal design can be both surprisingly easy and surprisingly difficult. If the mission profile is cold-biased it's an "easy" matter of judiciously adding heating and insulation (to retain heat). Here "easy" is in quotes because nothing is trivial or truly easy in space.
If you have to deal with temperatures beyond the maximum thermal range of the design, sometimes the "easy" solution (again, in quotes) is to schedule shutdowns or duty cycle around thermal conditions. The power-down storage temperature of most devices is much higher than operating limits. Yes, you would need hardware that can deal with extremes in order to wake everything back up. That's where the rad-hard $300K microprocessors come into the fold.
At the same time, you'd be surprised how well some non-rad hard hardware can do in space. There are imaging satellites that basically use qualified COTS imaging sensors quite successfully.
The case is similar for dealing with radiation. Don't turn things on until you have to and, when you do, if you can, limit operating time to the absolute minimum.
There's a lot more to the art and science of making things for space, of course. Everything out there is actively trying to kill everything you send out there 100% of the time.