[bkfunk]

But this wouldn’t be in orbit; it would be in what NASA calls “deep space”, which relies on the Deep Space Network [1]. The DSN is severely bandwidth constrained, due primarily to a lack of ground antennas. Indeed, for instruments that are located outside Earth’s orbit (e.g. SOHO, which is at Sun-Earth L1 [2]), bandwidth is often a limiting constraint in the design.

My understanding is that some newer instruments do both compress and select data to be downloaded (i.e. prioritizing signal over noise), and that there is more and more consideration of on-board processing for future missions, as well as possibly introducing the capability within DSN itself to prioritize which instruments get bandwidth based on scientific value of their data.

Source: A presentation from people at NASA Heliophysics last week, where this very topic came up.

[1]: < https://www.nasa.gov/communicating-with-missions/dsn/> [2]: < https://science.nasa.gov/mission/soho/>

[mapt]

The DSN is a radio network. In its present form, this is going to be ineffective for receiving a meaningful amount of imagery data from signals emitted by a lightweight space probe at 500AU. At ~150AU the current 25-70m dishes are getting less than 40 bits per second from Voyager 1.

Instead, we would use lasers with a far superior gain to what radio communication is capable of. The divergence on even a decent pocket laser pointer diode is less than 0.1 degree. This is a gain of 10*log10(41,253/(0.1*0.1)) = 66 degrees. Launch telescopes of modest size can increase this further. Then receiver telescopes fitted with narrowband filters can hone in on that laser signal.

> "First, transmitted beams from optical telescopes are far more slender than their radio counterparts owing to the high gain of optical telescopes (150 dB for the Keck Telescope versus 70 dB for Arecibo)." - https://www.princeton.edu/~willman/observatory/oseti/bioast9...

[rcxdude]

From the interview linked, it sounds like the current plan doesn't involve the DSN at all: they're effectively out of transmission range past a certain point, and the transmission back is optical, using a big earth or space-based telescope. Which is one of the scary things he mentioned: they're going to be entirely autonomous when collecting the data.

[airstrike]

Sounds like we need to drop little relay nodes along the way to build the first SpaceNet

[lukan]

"Which is one of the scary things he mentioned: they're going to be entirely autonomous when collecting the data."

With no way to send commands to the decices?

[InDubioProRubio]

Engrave it on a hair and coilgun it towards a receiver?