jwm@aplvax.jhuapl.edu (Jim Meritt) (05/05/89)
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"? Disclaimer: "It's mine! All mine!!!" - D. Duck
steve@umigw.MIAMI.EDU (steve emmerson) (05/05/89)
I heard "500,000 books" on the shuttle launch TV program today. Sounds like somebody divided the number of data bytes by the number of bytes in an average book. -- Steve Emmerson Inet: steve@umigw.miami.edu [128.116.10.1] SPAN: miami::emmerson (host 3074::) emmerson%miami.span@star.stanford.edu UUCP: ...!ncar!umigw!steve emmerson%miami.span@vlsi.jpl.nasa.gov "Computers are like God in the Old Testament: lots of rules and no mercy"
pgf@athena.mit.edu (Peter G. Ford) (05/05/89)
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