NASA Creating Laser Communication System For Mars

techtribune writes "NASA is in the process of developing a new technology under project Laser Communications Relay Demonstration or LCRD which will allow them to provide faster means of communications from Mars. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) currently can only send at speeds of around 6 Mbps or about like a DSL modem here on Earth. At this rate, it can take upwards to 90 minutes to transmit a single high resolution image to Earth from Mars. With the MRO outfitted with the new technology it would be able to transmit the same high resolution image back to Earth at over 100 Mbps and only taking about 5 minutes to do so."

Comments

Re:90 minutes: partially due to speed of light lim

[AndrewBuck]

Science images are NEVER EVER compressed in JPEG. In fact they probably don't even use the TIFF format either. Almost all science images in astronomy are done in the FITS format which I think was developed by NASA. This is because not only does the image need to be lossless raw data in order to be used for proper scientific measurements, but also much metadata must be included with the frame for some kinds of science observations.

Common metadata will include the position of the camera (where the orbiter was when the picture was taken), the camera's orientation (which way it was looking at the time), the exact time when the image was taken, the image exposure time, the camera's CCD temperature, whether on-chip binning has been carried out, the camera's readout noise, the camera's gain, etc. All of this information is necessary for some kinds of science and therefore NASA doesn't want to lose any of this information.

-Buck