The drive on the James Webb telescope holds only 68 GB

The James Webb Space Telescope has already begun work and showed the world stunning images deep space objects. But, as it turned out, even an inexpensive modern laptop is able to surpass a spacecraft in terms of storage capacity. The SSD installed on the telescope holds only 68 GB.

Image source: nasa.gov

By modern standards, 68 GB on the built-in drive is, of course, very little, although more than 2 GB on the Hubble telescope, which is considered the predecessor of the new device. On the other hand, it would be incorrect to compare equipment that works in space with devices that a consumer uses on Earth: a drive from a computer equipment store would quickly fail in these harsh conditions.

How explained Alex Hunter, a flight systems engineer at the Institute for Space Research using a space telescope, the volume of the James Webb drive is enough for regarding a day: the device broadcasts data to Earth from a distance of 1.5 million km. By the way, even those 68 GB that are provided in the SSD cannot be fully used by the device: 3% are reserved for engineering data and telemetry, and in 10 years the storage size can be reduced to 60 GB.

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