UNM micro-chip at heart of Hubble upgrade

17 Jun 2002

A micro-chip designed at the University of New Mexico's Microelectronics Research Center is at the heart of an upgrade unit being installed on the Hubble Space Telescope next week.

The current mission of the Space Shuttle Discovery, which was launched Feb. 11, includes replacement of an existing Engineering Science Tape Recorder with a Solid State Recorder containing the UNM chip. Astronauts are scheduled to make the exchange Sunday, Feb. 16 during the third spacewalk of the mission.

The MRC chip encodes data as it is stored into the Solid State Recorder and then decodes the information as it is taken out to provide error detection and correction capabilities. Without the UNM chip, the data stored in the recorder could be corrupted due to the effect of ionizing radiation from the space environment on the computer memory chips. The Solid State Recorder, containing the UNM chip, will result in a significant improvement to the quality of information relayed to earth from the Hubble because it has a larger capacity and flexibility for science data storage than the older Science Tape Recorder it replaced.