In just a few days, the James Webb Space Telescope has taken care of a series of sensational images that push our ability to see deeper into the universe’s past. Of course, it would not be possible without local storage, just like with Hubble. JWST uses a 68 GB SSDof which 3% is reserved for various telemetry and engineering data, the rest is available for “photos”.
While Hubble generated 1 to 2 GB of image data per day, James Webb can handle 57 GB per day. Data travels to earth from a distance of ~1.5 million kilometers (from the Sun-Earth Lagrangian point L2) at speeds of up to 28 Mbit/s, during two daily four-hour communication windows with Earth.
Although the SSD is undoubtedly made as durable as we are capable of, its capacity will decrease over the years due to wear and the influence of radiation. It is expected to decrease to about 60 GB in 10 years, NASA then assumes that James Webb could/should work for at least 20 years (recall that, unlike Hubble, service missions are not counted).
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