Pioneer/Jupiter Real-Time Display System

For the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft whose missions were to fly by the planet Jupiter and send back scientific information, an on-board instrument called an Imaging Photopolarimeter (IPP) was designed to collect the imaging data. The IPP was produced by a University of Arizona – Santa Barbara Research Center Team. A Pioneer Image Converter System (PICS) was conceived, designed and fabricated at the Optical Sciences Center of the University of Arizona to use part of the digital data transmitted to earth for conversion to NTSC color TV images. The IPP has sensitivity in the spectral bands of red and blue, chosen for scientific reasons; therefore, to make color images in NTSC format, PICS was designed to produce a green signal by processing the red and blue signals separately, in a nonlinear fashion, then mixing them to form the green signal. The three signals are connected to an NTSC color encoder. A color time-base corrector performs the final time-base and color correction to ±3 ns. and to provide a real-time display of imaging data so that the IPP operation could be monitored during the entire Jupiter encounter sequence.

Print ISSN

0361-4573

Published

1975-06

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/J13358