

The RF Telecommunications System for the New Horizons Mission to Pluto [pdf] - blueintegral
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~tcase/NH%20RF%20Telecom%20Sys%20ID1369%20FINAL_Deboy.pdf

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blueintegral
Note that the Ultrastable Oscillator they use for their 30 MHz frequency
reference has a short term stability of 1 part in 10 trillion! To compare,
TCXOs used in commercial circuitry often have a stability of around 1 part per
million.

~~~
btoptical
While impressive it's not clear why such a low phase noise oscillator is
needed. This oscillator looks like it takes up lots of space and power. So
some justification for the device should be presented. Furthermore its
possible to create a robust FEC that would be tolerant of burst errors due to
phase noise. So the paper is incomplete without some mention of phase noise
and the FEC used.

Other than the high end parts used in this device, it is fairly low-tech
compared to most modern communications systems. That is a good thing for
something like this I guess.

~~~
structural
Keep in mind this was designed in 2002 using technology that was considered
rock-solid & mature at that time. Spacecraft technology always seems outdated
because of the lead times required: on something like New Horizons, it's
between 15 and 20 years from component design to being used for its primary
mission.

In addition, as another commenter noted, the reference oscillator is used for
REX (the radiometry experiment on board New Horizons) and quality of gathered
measurements for this experiment was one of the primary needs here: being able
to use the component for the communications subsystem is just good power/mass
engineering at work.

------
tzs
A couple more comments are available on the submission from 3 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9890476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9890476)

