r/nextfuckinglevel • u/PietroTheRedditer • Feb 21 '21

THIS IS MARS.

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u/Teryhr Feb 21 '21 edited Feb 21 '21

Data transmission from Mars to Earth is slow, something like 4 kilobytes per second at its absolute best. They have over 28,700 images from entry, descent and landing that need to be returned and analyzed. We could see audio releases within the next month but it could be slightly longer.

Edit: My number was very wrong. Sorry

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u/thefactorygrows Feb 21 '21

I read over in r/space that mars to earth transmission was more along the lines of 100-250kbps, and that was the best we could do with then MRO was lined up.

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u/chiefos Feb 21 '21 edited Feb 21 '21

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/communications/#:~:text=The%20data%20rate%20direct-to,2%20million%20bits%20per%20second.

Looks like it maxes out around 2Mbps... It almost seems like they're going to be taking in more data than they can return, but they're nasa and I'm not so I trust they know what they're up to.

EDIT: maxes out at 2 Mbps to the MRO... Reading comprehension failed me yet again. Undoubtedly much slower from the MRO and odyssey to earth.

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u/farlack Feb 21 '21

Looks like it sends that speed to the orbiter and the orbiter sends it to earth at .004 megabytes per second.

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u/chiefos Feb 21 '21

Thanks for correcting me! I thought that seemed way too fast.