Rescue of data from Pioneer 10 & 11 tapes FINAL WORD

[Randy McLaughlin]

From: "Tim Shoppa" <shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 12, 2005 5:37 AM


>> 8GB? Somehow I would think that Pioneer 10 and 11 have sent back
>> more data than that.
>
> Max data rate for the link is only 2048 bits per second, and that's
> only when all the antenna-pointing for such a high rate is available
> (those antennas have other things to cover in general...)
>
> At 2048 bits per second, you get 8 GBytes/year.  But most of the
> instruments you'd use when not doing a planetary flyby are happily
> served by a data rate of a few bits per second (which is how it spent
> most of its active life).
>
> Here in 2005, though, it's likely that the most interesting instruments
> are those that had low data rates.  Not that the pictures weren't
> pretty, but all the folks I worked with (space plasma physicists) were
> far more interested in the not-pictures :-).  I'm not sure how 100
> tapes got turned into 8 Gbytes, but it's likely that data from a probe
> that spans decades have their data spread among a lot of original tapes.
>
> Tim.

More to the point no one should assume that ant tape is full.

The tapes could have easily been segregated by time and the data stream is 
not constant so the amount of data accumulated would vary day to day.


Randy
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