Editing MESSENGER (section)

===Computer and software===

The spacecraft's onboard computer system was contained in an Integrated Electronics Module (IEM), a device that combined core [[avionics]] into a single box. The computer featured two [[Radiation hardening|radiation-hardened]] [[IBM RAD6000]]s, a 25&nbsp;[[megahertz]] main processor, and a 10&nbsp;MHz fault protection processor. For redundancy, the spacecraft carried a pair of identical IEMs. For [[Data storage device|data storage]], the spacecraft carried two [[Solid-state drive|solid-state]] recorders able to store up to one [[gigabyte]] each. The IBM RAD6000 main processor collected, [[Data compression|compressed]], and stored data from ''MESSENGER''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s instruments for later playback to Earth.<ref name="MESSENGERLaunch"/>

''MESSENGER'' used a software suite called SciBox to simulate its orbit and instruments, in order to "choreograph the complicated process of maximizing the scientific return from the mission and minimizing conflicts between instrument observations, while at the same time meeting all spacecraft constraints on pointing, data downlink rates, and onboard data storage capacity."<ref name="jhuapl"/>