In a nutshell: Unlike Hubble which orbits shut sufficient to Earth for astronauts to achieve if want be, the brand new James Webb Space Telescope is roughly one million miles from residence. That makes it nearly unserviceable (a minimum of within the close to time period), that means NASA needed to equip it with solely essentially the most dependable and hardened {hardware} earlier than sending it off into area.
All knowledge collected by Webb is saved domestically on a 68GB solid-state drive, and three % of the area is reserved for engineering and telemetry knowledge. All issues thought-about, Webb can accumulate as much as 57GB of science knowledge per day relying on the goal it’s observing.
Webb wants to dump its knowledge every day with a view to keep away from working out of room. It does this by way of a 25.9-gigahertz channel on the Ka-band at speeds as much as 28 megabits per second. The observatory additionally makes use of two channels within the S-band together with a 2.09-GHz uplink that receives future transmission and statement schedules from Earth at 16 kilobits per second and a 2.27-GHz, 40-kb/s downlink to ship engineering knowledge again residence.
For comparability, Hubble can generate as much as 2GB of knowledge every day.
Webb is a part of the Deep Space Network (DSN), a world communications community with floor amenities positioned within the US, Spain and Australia that helps varied spacecraft missions. All of its communications channels make use of the Reed-Solomonerror-correction protocol, which can be utilized in QR codes and Blu-ray / DVDs.
Webb will solely wipe its SSD to release area after it receives affirmation that its present knowledge has efficiently made it to Earth.
Webb’s SSD should not degrade an excessive amount of over time, both. By the top of its deliberate 10-year mission, NASA expects it to nonetheless have the ability to maintain round 60GB of knowledge.
