Although the solid-state drive (SSD) seems almost too small for a piece of technology that cost $10 billion and took a whopping 30 years to build, a recent report reveals that NASA had good reasons for choosing this type of hardware. It only takes about 120 minutes to fill the SSD, depending on the observations the scientists have scheduled. Scroll down for videos The James Webb Space Telescope stores its data on a relatively small 68 GB disk drive. Pictured is the Carina Nebula, located about 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation called Carina JWST can send data back to Earth at a speed of 28 megabytes per second, according to Carl Hansen, flight systems engineer at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “I knew where the dangers were on this mission. And I wanted to make sure that we don’t have new risks,” he told IEEE Spectrum. The speed of data transfer means that all the new information can be transmitted to Earth in about four and a half hours – despite the fact that JWST collects far more data than Hubble ever could: 57 GB versus only 1-2 GB per day. Hansen explained to the outlet that it does this during two daily 4-hour contact windows, each allowing for the transmission of 28.6 GB of scientific data. JWST can send data back to Earth at a speed of 28 megabytes per second. Pictured is the Southern Ring Nebula, which is nearly half a light-year in diameter and about 2,000 light-years away from Earth, according to NASA That’s why only enough storage is needed to collect a day’s worth of images—no need to keep them on the telescope itself. James Webb will also share Deep Space Network (DSN) resources with the Parker Solar Probe, Voyager probes, Mars rovers and other important spaceflight technologies. DSN contains three antenna arrays 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 be reduced to about 60 GB due to radiation and wear and tear in deep space. Pictured is the Stephano Quintet, a group of five galaxies in the constellation Pegasus Beyond the delicate balance of transmitting data at precise times and sharing such high-tech tools with other efforts, JWST must also contend with natural forces that add an element of risk. JWST is a million miles from Earth at the L2 Lagrange point, where it must 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 be reduced to about 60 GB due to radiation and wear and tear in deep space. According to NASA, SMACS 0723 – pictured above – has a gravitational pull so strong that it distorts both spacetime and the path light takes next The world is still absorbing the spectacular first images produced by NASA, and scientists will glean countless insights about our universe in the coming months and years from JWST. The first batch of images includes a galaxy cluster as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago and a planetary nebula caused by a dying star. Because of the way light warps or bends space-time, combined with Webb’s infrared capabilities – the telescope can “see back in time” to the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. MailOnline took a closer look at some of the easily missed details in the images, which are just the first of many captured by James Webb. Dazzling, unprecedented images of a ‘stellar nursery’, dying star covered in dust and a ‘cosmic dance’ between a group of galaxies have been revealed to the world by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. SMACS 0723 The first new Webb image, released by US President Joe Biden on Monday, a day before 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 held together by their own gravity. They contain hundreds or thousands of galaxies, very hot plasma and a large amount of dark matter – invisible mass that only interacts with normal matter through gravity and does not emit, absorb or reflect light. This image of SMACS 0723 covers a patch of sky about the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground – and reveals thousands of galaxies in a tiny sliver of the vast universe. Spectacular: Galaxy clusters like SMACS 0723 are the largest objects in the universe held together by their own gravity. Here’s the original image, released by NASA on Monday According to NASA, SMACS 0723 has a gravitational pull so strong that it distorts both spacetime and the path light takes next. Because of this, bright white galaxies distort and stretch the light from more distant galaxies, making them appear elongated, almost banana-shaped.

HOW DOES JAMES WEBB LOOK BACK IN TIME?

The further away an object is, the further back in time we look. This is due to the time it takes light to travel from the object to us. With James Webb’s largest mirror, it will be able to see almost all the way back to the beginning of the Universe, about 13.7 billion years ago. With its ability to view the Universe in longer-wavelength infrared light, James Webb will be able to see some of the most distant galaxies in our Universe, certainly with greater ease than Hubble’s visible/ultraviolet light. This is because light from distant objects is stretched by the expansion of our Universe – a phenomenon known as redshift – pushing the light out of the visible range and into the infrared. Source: Royal Museums Greenwich The combined mass of SMACS 0723 acts as a gravitational lens and, according to NASA, “magnifies and distorts the light of objects behind them, allowing a deep-field view of both extremely distant and intrinsically faint 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 brought distant galaxies into sharp focus in the new image. Tiny, faint structures never seen before, including star clusters—groups of hundreds to millions of stars that share a common origin, all gravitationally bound together for several billion years. STEPHAN’S QUINTET Next is Stephan’s Quintet, a group of five galaxies in the constellation Pegasus, first discovered by French astronomer Édouard Stephan in 1877. It’s fair to say Mr Stephan would be thrilled by the new James Webb image of his discovery, which captures the five galaxies in “exquisite detail”, says NASA. Four of the five galaxies in the quintet are locked in a “cosmic dance” of repeated close encounters. “Dust lanes criss-crossing galaxies and long filaments of stars and gas extending far beyond the central regions suggest galaxies twisted by violent encounters,” says the European Space Agency. “Galaxies float through space, warped shapes shaped by tidal interactions, woven together in the intricate patterns of a vast 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 extended “H II region” – regions of ionized hydrogen atoms, shown as red spots, where star formation occurs. The Stephano Quintet is a group of five galaxies in the constellation Pegasus, first discovered by the French astronomer Édouard Stephan in 1877. NASA said the image is a huge mosaic, covering about a fifth of the moon’s diameter. It contains more than 150 million pixels and is made of almost 1,000 separate image files. Stefan’s Quintet is famous for appearing as the angelic figures at the beginning of the much-loved 1946 Christmas movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” starring James Stewart and Donna Reed. KARINA CLOUD The Carina Nebula is one of the brightest and largest nebulae in space, located about 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation called Carina. Nebulae are stellar nurseries where stars are born, and this one is home to many giant stars, including some larger than the sun. The striking shot 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 part of NGC 3324, and what NASA calls the “Cosmic Rocks” – an orange-brown landscape of “steep mountains” and “valleys” dotted with twinkling baby stars. At the bottom of the image is the western part of NGC 3324, and what NASA calls the “Cosmic Rocks” – an orange-brown landscape of “steep mountains” and “valleys” dotted with twinkling baby stars. NASA experts don’t even know what some of the structures in this image are because they are so unprecedented The puffy, ultraviolet radiation from the young stars sculpts the wall of the nebula, slowly eroding it away. The tallest “peaks” in this image are about seven light-years high. NASA says: “Dramatic pillars tower above the glowing wall of gas, resisting this radiation. The ‘steam’ that appears to rise from the celestial ‘mountains’ is actually hot, ionized gas and hot dust flowing away from the nebula due to relentless radiation.”

INSTRUMENTS AT THE JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE

NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) an infrared image from the edge of the visible through…