Wiring Up ASCENT-1: The Electrical Architecture

Today we finished mapping out the full electrical architecture of ASCENT-1 — the single diagram that shows how every component draws power and talks to the flight controller. With the battery choice already settled, this was the natural next step: turning a pile of parts into one coherent system on paper before a single wire gets crimped.

At the center sits the Orange Cube+ flight controller, fed navigation data by the Here3+ GNSS and linked to the ground through HereLink for telemetry and video. The lithium-ion main pack runs through an external and then a main power distribution board, which feeds the six motor ESCs on the main bus and steps down through a UBEC to the 12V and 5V rails that power the avionics. The Jetson Orin Nano rides alongside as the companion computer for the autonomy stack. One deliberate choice: the payload delivery winch runs off its own 12V battery through a dedicated motor driver, so lowering a payload never pulls current away from the flight-critical systems.

Laying it out this way also forces the safety and support pieces into the plan from the start — the safety switch, Remote ID, downward LiDAR, and onboard status display each have a defined place on the bus instead of being bolted on later. With the architecture agreed on, the next milestone is building it for real and integrating it onto the airframe.