If you tell someone to buy a SSD of 64 GB for the PC nowadays, they will directly take you for a madman, since today there is little room for all the uses that can be given to both a PC and a smartphone. Well, it seems that the most advanced space telescope in the world, James Webbdoes its job with an SSD of only 68 GB ability. This telescope was the last feat of the Nasa and showed us the best and most complex images of the universe, surpassing the Hubble telescope.
Less than a week ago, NASA and the President of the United States, Joe Biden, showed the first image captured by the James Webb Telescope. It was totally done viral, since it showed us a part of the universe as we had never seen it before. In fact, they even looked undiscovered galaxies. All thanks to the camera NIR Cam near infrared and gravitational lens this made it possible to show a much more distant zone of the universe. However, what we didn’t know is that to store and transmit these images, it uses from an SSD.
NASA chose a 68GB “Special SSD” as the best option
We are talking about a special telescope that cost $10 billion and they only put in a 68GB storage unit. Sounds crazy, but NASA decided an SSD was the best option for the James Webb, although it’s not like the mainstream ones. First of all, this telescope is located at a distance of a million miles from Eartha lot further away that telescopes like the Hubble.
This area is constantly bombarded with radiation at levels that any other SSD couldn’t handle, and what’s more, it’s capable of operating at a temperature of -370°Fthat’s to say, -223°C. Just think about the process certificate that said SSD had to pass, already makes us see the degree of pampering that James Webb receives. Even so, don’t expect super fast speeds, because both due to the distance and the conditions it’s in, it’s already a feat that works.
That said, it is capable of transmitting the data to Earth at a speed of 28 Mbps through a connection in except Ka at 25.9 GHz which works through Deep Space Network.
The 68GB choice for the James Webb has been calculated
As one can imagine, with a capacity even lower than the storage of many current smartphones, the James Webb’s SSD can easily fill up. However, everything is calculated, since in one day, the James Webb telescope collects 57 GB of data (against 1 or 2 GB collected by Hubble) there transfers them To the earth. This happens in intervals time of 4 hours each, where they are transferred 28.6 GB of data every time.
In total, the transfer time of the 57 GB of data is approximately 4.5 hours. Therefore, we can conclude that James Webb’s SSD is sufficient, as data is transferred and storage is constantly being emptied. That said, the images we saw were not “saved” to the telescope itself, but transferred a few hours later.
Now we all know that SSDs suffer from degradation over time and this disc, although different, is not exempt from this condition. With a lifetime James Webb Telescope 10 yearsyour SSD during these, seeing its capacity shrink to 60 GB at the end. Now we must add that a 3% of the capacity of this He reserves for storing engineering data and telemetry. This is therefore the reason for its 68 GB, which are 11 GB more of what you need, to be able to get by with a small margin of free space.