NEW HORIZONS SOLID-STATE RECORDER ELECTRONICS AND OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE

摘要

NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto-Charon and the Kuiper Belt is the initial reconnaissance of this region of the solar system. In response to the unique nature of this endeavor a novel approach to high speed storage of a large amount of instrument data was necessary. The design of the observatory's solid-state recorder (SSR) and the related software to support the mission's concept of operations is described. Of particular interest is the decision to utilize readily available open-source software for portions of the SSR functionality and to develop custom software for others. The considerations leading to the selection of the Independent JPEG Group's implementation of JPEG / JFIF data compression standard (ISO/IEC IS 10918-1) will be discussed and the subsequent experience of integrating this code library will be contrasted with the more conventional implementation of the other command and data handling functions associated with the SSR.