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From: pgf@athena.mit.edu (Peter G. Ford)
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Data Volume
Message-ID: <11140@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 5 May 89 03:20:02 GMT
References: <3801@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu>
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Reply-To: pgf@space.mit.edu (Peter G. Ford)
Organization: MIT Center for Space Research
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In article <3801@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu> jwm@aplvax.jhuapl.edu (Jim Meritt) writes:
>
>Given that the Magellan is suppose to have "resolution down to football
>sizes" and all of Venus is dry, how many pixels would we be talking
>about here (assume pixel tone is function of height, so only one
>pixel per resolution cell).  How much data are we talking about here, 
>beside "a bunch"?

The downlink telemetry rate will be 268 Kbaud. During the "nominal"
243-day mapping mission, Magellan will return about 5 terabits
(5.0e+12) of data.  This will be further processed back on earth, and
the primary data product will consist of over 400 images, each of
8192x7168 pixels (bytes), i.e.  about 250 gigabytes total.  In one
series of images, each pixel represents a 75x75 meter area of Venus
surface.  In a series of lower resolution images, each pixel represents
225x225 meters. Pixel intensity will be a function of radar "brightness",
not height. A separate altimeter experiment will return topography
information,  but at a much lower horizontal resolution, i.e. 10x10 km.

Peter Ford
MIT and Magellan Project