[X] My Assistant

[MahFL]

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[monitorlizard]

I am not an expert in such things, but I was thinking along the lines of the Honeywell Aerospace Satellite Data Server.

See http://www.honeywell.com/sites/aero/Data-P...A6EC2FAE1F6.htm

It's radiation-hardened, but of course that's for the Earth orbit environment. Perhaps a combination of this design and spot shielding would enable Jovian operations.
The Honeywell product is 16 Tbits. I believe there are larger recorders, but they may be classified.

[mcaplinger]

I was thinking along the lines of the Honeywell Aerospace Satellite Data Server.

The lack of specs makes this hard to evaluate, but the box looks like it weighs multiple kilos and it doesn't say what memory technology it uses.

A typical box designed for the GEO environment will have a hard time at Jupiter without a lot of extra shielding. A lot.

[vjkane]

My understanding is that the core spacecraft electronics are less of a problem than the sensor electronics. The former can be put inside a radiation shielded vault (think aluminum plates and surrounding fuel tanks). The sensor heads, on the other hand, must be exposed to the environment (although they can be shielded on sides other than their viewing outlet).

NASA is using a lot of the preformulation money to fund radiation hardening of the instruments.

[mcaplinger]

My understanding is that the core spacecraft electronics are less of a problem than the sensor electronics.

Less of a problem, though getting non-volatile memory to survive is still a significant issue.

At any rate, we were discussing this in the context of a very small spacecraft. IMHO, this is simply infeasible with current technology for a whole host of reasons.

As for sensors, there's nothing I can say without getting into competition-sensitive areas. From an engineering perspective, I don't see a lot of rational and realistic system trades having been made as far as Europa missions are concerned.