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More on the Pluto-Kuiper Express
addie writes "Scientific American has a great, extensive article about Pluto and the possibilities of exploring it in the near future. Neat descriptions of Kuiper Belt and what we can learn about solar system birth and growth from the tiny planet."
An all spacecraft that were operated in the harsh environment of jupiters radiation belt and/or beyond jupiter they have used tape recorders.
That's true, but solid state tape recorders are starting to be used in missions closer to home.
/ payload52.h tm
u sli.htm
h tm
Hubble Tape deck replaced with solid state recorder in 1997, stores 12 gigabits. Old tape deck stored 1.2 gigabits:
http://www.shuttlepresskit.com/STS-103
The ESA is also tinkering with them:
http://esapub.esrin.esa.it/pff/pffv5n2/mae
NEAR - Near Earth Asteroid Rendesvous - carried a 1.7 gigabit solid state recorder
http://near.jhuapl.edu/spacecraft/
On the other hand, Galileo used a regular tape deck, and had some mechanical problems with it.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/mess38/TAPE.
So, it's true that all missions past Mars have used a tape deck, it's also true that mechanical systems can break down pretty easily. I predict that the success of solid state recorders on several missions is going to lead to these devices being universally used everywhere in the solar system.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Geez, I totally forgot to check out what Cassini uses. Sure enough, Cassini is carrying a solid state recorder all the way to Saturn! It's a 2 gigabit recorder, and it has enough spare memory cells and redundancy to guarantee 1.8 megabits after long exposure to radiation in space.
a ft / ommand.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/spacecr
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.