Matt Gialich

On the satellite side, we use really, really powerful amplifiers.

So spacecraft like Voyager, Psyche,

New Horizons use what's called the traveling wave tube and then get, you know, 100 dB gains.

Now keep in mind, every 3 dB is twice the power.

So you're talking exponential power growth to send back to Earth.

All of that being said, and I should quantify this maybe so it's a little bit easier to understand.

We talk about something like, talk a little bit more about our spacecraft.

We broadcast at about 15 watts.

Your cell phone on its highest setting will broadcast at 100 milliwatts.

Right?

So we're much, much more powerful than your cell phone can even get to.

On top of that, the real trick we do here is we slow down the data substantially.

So we communicate.

Voyager's communicating at 160 bits per second right now.

That is so slow.

And that's why we have more integration time on the ground to determine if something is a one or a zero.

So we're just adding it up at very high sample rates to say, oh, that was a one, that was a zero.

But 160 bits per second.

Think about that.

If you want to send down a basic JPEG image