How much bandwidth does Spirit have to play with?

[Kinthalis]

Does anyone know how much bandwidth does the Spirit rover have to send us information?

It seems that it can’t be very much at all. The pictures we’ve gotten so far (granted there is probably a lot of other information being transmitted) are not very high resolution, and appear to have taken days to be ‘downloaded’.

I’m guessing this is to beexpected considering the bewildering distance!

Also, can anyone explain to me how the telecommunications between earth and the rover work?

[Grey]

This much

data rate direct-to-Earth varies from about 12,000 bits per second to 3,500 bits per second (roughly a third as fast as a standard home modem). The data rate to the orbiters is a constant 128,000 bits per second (4 times faster than a home modem). An orbiter passes over the rover and is in the vicinity of the sky to communicate with the rovers for about eight minutes at a time, per sol. In that time, about 60 megabits of data (about 1/100 of a CD) can be transmitted to an orbiter. That same 60 megabits would take between 1.5 and 5 hours to transmit direct to Earth