Inside NASA’s James Webb Telescope

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The james webb space telescope he got take great photos from space in the margin of the stars. Last week caught the first and he looked spectacular, being so an important week in the world of science for the great progress made after more than 3 years of development that the project required.

Recently we managed to get more information about the operation inside the James Webb Space Telescope. And, although the effectiveness of this project is more than proven, the truth is that there is a fact that any user finds very curious. While currently any computer generally includes a disk with at least 256 GB of storage, the James Webb Space Telescope SSD capable of storing all the information in the Universe is of a much smaller capacity: it has only 68 GB of storage.

Your Computer Has A Bigger SSD Than The James Webb Space Telescope, But There’s A Good Reason Behind It

under the name of Solid state recorderthe disk of the space telescope which allows both its operation and the storage of images, recordings and information is be as small as 68 GB. However, curious as it may seem, at NASA they had already calculated everything. Only 3% of said unit’s storage is occupied by fixed engineering information and is present at all times.

This is how they worked to build the James Webb Space Telescope. Image: Nasa

The remaining disk capacity is used to capture additional information. Every day, the James Webb connects to Earth and, via a 25.9 GHz channel and additional transmission paths, transfer information for 4 hours. It can be done at a speed of up to 28 Mbps and, as soon as it is confirmed from the planet that everything is ready and received correctly, the information is destroyed on the SSD.

Considering the amount of information collected and the use of the satellite, it was calculated that the maximum disk capacity that can be occupied is 57 GB of data. However, they gave an extra 10GB margin since that is the expected degradation for the disc in the next 10 years, something normal given that this type of unit has a limited number of information rewrites.

However, the most curious thing is that this disk is not the same as the one on your computer. Due to its location, any disc currently on the market would be destroyed if present in the telescope. We are talking about a much more expensive model, capable of perfectly resistant to cosmic radiation. Considering the high prices, it is more than normal that James Webb’s SSD only has 68 GB of capacity. For its use, it is more than enoughand despite this, it is able to offer great images of planets like Jupiter and other parts of the Universe.

Related Topics: Science

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