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The radio frequency band that many NASA missions use to communicate with spacecraft — S-band — is getting a bit crowded and noisy, and likely to get more [congested] as science missions demand higher and higher data rates.
A team of NASA technologists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, just may have a solution, particularly for potential missions that plan to operate in low-Earth orbit and have limited real estate to accommodate communications gear.
Under two different research and development projects, technologists Mae Huang and Victor Marrero-Fontanez have collaborated to test and verify components of a prototype end-to-end Ka-band space communications system, which promises significantly higher data rates — a whopping 2.4 gigabits of data per second (Gbps) — over more traditional S-band systems, which theoretically could achieve data rates of 90 megabits of data per second (Mbps).
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-02/nsfc-ntd021715.php
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday February 19 2015, @07:54PM
Probably just leverage the cheap and plentiful flash storage now available and just buffer data and downlink it at the data rate with the best error corrected throughput and when that is lower than the rate data is being acquired just let the flash hold onto it until conditions improve, Most data collected from NASA missions takes years to study anyway, waiting a few days now and again when there is bad weather isn't a problem.
Probably wouldn't want to take that attitude with a real time project like a weather observation sat. and communications relays are right out.