The James Webb Space Telescope, which has already stunned the world with magnificent images of distant galaxies and distant planets, stores its data in a relatively small 68 GB drive – that’s enough to hold just one day of images.
While the solid state drive (SSD) seems almost too small for a piece of technology that cost $ 10 billion and took years to build, a recent report reveals that NASA had good reasons to choose this type of hardware.
It only takes about 120 minutes to fill the SSD, depending on what observations the scientists have programmed.
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The James Webb Space Telescope stores your data on a relatively small 68GB drive. In the photo is the Carina Nebula, located about 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina.
The JWST can send data to Earth at 28 megabytes per second, according to Carl Hansen, a flight systems engineer at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
‘I knew where the risks were in this mission. And I wanted to make sure we didn’t take any new risks, ”he told IEEE Spectrum.
The speed of data transfer means that all new information can be sent to Earth in about four and a half hours, although JWST collects much more data than Hubble could ever do: 57 GB versus only 1-2 GB per day.
Hansen explained at the point of sale that he does this during two 4-hour daily contact windows, each of which allows the transmission of 28.6 GB of science data.
The JWST can send data to Earth at 28 megabytes per second. In the photo is the southern ring nebula, which is almost half a light-year in diameter and is about 2,000 light-years from Earth, according to NASA.
That’s why you only need enough storage to pick up the images for a day; there is no need to keep them in the telescope.
The James Webb will also share deep space network (DSN) resources with the Parker solar probe, Voyager probes, Mars rovers and other large space technologies.
The DSN contains three antenna complexes located in Madrid, Spain; Barstow, California, and Canberra, Australia.
Alex Hunter, also a flight systems engineer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, says that by the end of JWST’s 10-year mission life, they expect to drop to about 60 GB due to radiation and wear and tear from deep space. Pictured is the Stephan Quintet, a group of five galaxies in the constellation Pegasus
Beyond the delicate balance of transmitting data at precise times and sharing high-tech tools with other efforts, the JWST must also fight with natural forces that add an element of danger.
The JWST is located one million miles from Earth at point L2 in Lagrange, where it has to contend with radiation and temperatures of about -370 degrees Fahrenheit.
Alex Hunter, also a flight systems engineer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, says that by the end of JWST’s 10-year mission life, they expect to drop to about 60 GB due to radiation and wear and tear from deep space.
According to NASA, SMACS 0723, pictured above, has such a powerful gravitational pull that it distorts both space-time and the path that light subsequently traverses through it.
The world is still absorbing the spectacular first images that NASA produced and scientists will gain countless knowledge about our universe in the coming months and years from JWST.
The first batch of images includes a cluster of galaxies as they appeared 4.6 billion years ago and a planetary nebula caused by a dying star.
Because of the way light distorts or bends space-time, combined with Webb’s infrared capabilities, the telescope can “look back in time” to the Big Bang of 13.8 billion years ago.
MailOnline has taken a closer look at some of the details that can be easily lost in images, which are just the first of many that James Webb has captured.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed to the world dazzling and unprecedented images of a “stellar nursery”, a dying star covered in dust and a “cosmic dance” between a group of galaxies.
SMACS 0723
Webb’s first new image, released Monday by U.S. President Joe Biden, a day earlier than the others, shows the SMACS 0723 galaxy cluster as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago.
Clusters of galaxies are the largest objects in the universe that are held together by their own gravity.
They contain hundreds or thousands of galaxies, a lot of hot plasma and a lot of dark matter: an invisible mass that only interacts with regular matter by gravity and does not emit, absorb or reflect light.
This image of SMACS 0723 covers a piece of sky about the size of a grain of sand held in one arm by someone on earth, and reveals thousands of galaxies in a small part of a vast universe.
Spectacular: Clusters of galaxies, such as SMACS 0723, are the largest objects in the universe that are held together by their own gravity. Here is the original image, released by NASA on Monday
According to NASA, SMACS 0723 has such a powerful gravitational pull that it distorts both space-time and the path that light subsequently travels through it.
Because of this, bright white galaxies deform and stretch the light from the most distant galaxies, making them look elongated, almost banana-shaped.
HOW DO YOU EVER SEE WEBB IN TIME?
The farther away an object is, the further back in time we are looking.
This is due to the time it takes light to travel from the object to us.
With James Webb’s largest mirror, you will be able to see almost all the way back to the beginning of the Universe, about 13.7 billion years ago.
With his ability to see the Universe in longer wavelength infrared light, James Webb will be able to see some of the most distant galaxies in our Universe, certainly more easily than the visible / ultraviolet light vision of the Hubble.
This is because the light from distant objects extends through the expansion of our Universe, an effect known as shifting to red, pushing light out of the visible range and into the infrared.
Source: Royal Museums Greenwich
The combined mass of SMACS 0723 functions as a gravitational lens and, according to NASA, “widens and distorts the light of objects behind them, allowing deep field vision in both extremely distant and intrinsically weak galaxy populations.”
NASA said Webb’s NIRCam, which captures light from the edge of the visible through the near-infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, has put distant galaxies in a sharp focus on the new image.
Tiny, faint structures that had never been seen before, including star clusters: clusters of hundreds to millions of stars that share a common origin, all gravitationally bound together for several billion years.
STEPHAN QUINTET
Next is the Stephan Quintet, a group of five galaxies in the constellation Pegasus, first discovered by French astronomer Edouard Stephan in 1877.
It’s fair to say that Mr. Stephan would be blown away by James Webb’s new image of his discovery, which captures the five galaxies with “exquisite detail,” NASA says.
Four of the quintet’s five galaxies are locked in a “cosmic dance” of repeated close encounters.
“Dust lanes that intersect between galaxies and long filaments of stars and gas that extend far beyond the central regions suggest galaxies twisted by violent encounters,” the European Space Agency says.
“Galaxies float through space, distorted shapes shaped by tidal interactions, weaving into the intricate figures of an immense cosmic dance, choreographed by gravity.”
Two of the five galaxies, NGC 7318 a and b, form a pair and almost appear as one in the new image.
The brightest member of the five is the spiral galaxy NGC 7320, on the left of the image, which is closer than the others.
NGC 7320 has an extensive “H II region”: regions of ionized hydrogen atoms, represented as red spots, where star formation occurs.
The Stephan Quintet is a group of five galaxies in the constellation Pegasus, first discovered by French astronomer Edouard Stephan in 1877.
NASA said the image is a huge mosaic, covering about a fifth of the diameter of the Moon. It contains more than 150 million pixels and is built from nearly 1,000 separate image files.
Stephan’s Quintet is famous for appearing as angelic figures at the start of the much-loved 1946 Christmas film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, starring James Stewart and Donna Reed.
CARINA NEBULA
The Carina Nebula is one of the brightest and largest nebulae in space, located about 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina.
Nebulae are stellar nurseries where stars are born and this in particular is home to many giant stars, including some larger than the sun.
The impressive plan shows the edge of a nearby, young star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula.
At the bottom of the image is the western section of NGC 3324, and what NASA calls “Cosmic Cliffs”: an orange-brown landscape of “steep mountains” and “valleys” stained with bright stars.
At the bottom of the image is the western section of NGC 3324, and what NASA calls “Cosmic Cliffs”: an orange-brown landscape of “steep mountains” and “valleys” stained with bright stars. NASA experts do not even know what some of the structures in this image are, because they are unprecedented
The ultraviolet and bottle radiation from the young stars is slowly sculpting the wall of the nebula by eroding it. The highest “peaks” in this image are about seven light-years high.
NASA says, “The dramatic pillars rise above the wall of glowing gas, resisting this radiation. The ‘steam’ that seems to emerge from the celestial ‘mountains’ is actually hot, ionized gas and hot dust that is away from the nebula due to relentless radiation “.
TELESCPI INSTRUMENTS JAMES WEBB
NIRCam (Near InfraRed Camera) an infrared image from the edge of the visible …