The recent pictures of Mars transmitted to NASA and viewed across the globe were made possible, in part, by the research of three scientists from Haifa’s Technion. Hewlett Packard Labs told the Jerusalem Post that the pictures transmitted from the Mars explorer "Spirit," were made possible due to the Israeli research team.
The unique image-compression algorithm was developed by Gadi Sarousi, HP Labs’ Director of its Information Theory Research group, as well as Guillermo Shapiro and Marcelo Weinberger. HP said that the compression technology enabled the sending of the high-quality photos from Mars in a short period. Weinberger and Sarousi, both graduates of the Technion, wrote their doctorates under Professors Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv, the developers of the Lempel-Ziv coding algorithm – which has become the international standard for compressed information transmission.
"Because of the great distance between Earth and Mars, the signals are very weak, thus data can be transferred very slowly. Thus the way to speed it up is to compress the data and translate it into another form with many fewer bits without harming the quality of the image," Ziv told the Jerusalem Post. "NASA adopted the algorithm originally developed by our graduates, who are the second generation of our original work."
The formulas save "billions of dollars," continued Ziv, "as the more data you have coming in, the larger the antenna farms you have to build. If the data is compressed, the number of antennas and the amount of space they cover is much smaller."
Dr. Jacob Ziv developed his mathematical formulas with Prof. Abraham Lempel, publishing their findings in three journal articles in the late 70’s. Ziv presently serves as the president of the Israel Academy of Sciences, and Lempel leads scientific research at Hewlett-Packard's R&D center in Haifa.
The Mars mission includes another Israel connection. A plaque is affixed to the sprit’s antenna that commemorates the astronauts killed in the space-shuttle Columbia disaster, including Israeli Col. Ilan Ramon.
The unique image-compression algorithm was developed by Gadi Sarousi, HP Labs’ Director of its Information Theory Research group, as well as Guillermo Shapiro and Marcelo Weinberger. HP said that the compression technology enabled the sending of the high-quality photos from Mars in a short period. Weinberger and Sarousi, both graduates of the Technion, wrote their doctorates under Professors Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv, the developers of the Lempel-Ziv coding algorithm – which has become the international standard for compressed information transmission.
"Because of the great distance between Earth and Mars, the signals are very weak, thus data can be transferred very slowly. Thus the way to speed it up is to compress the data and translate it into another form with many fewer bits without harming the quality of the image," Ziv told the Jerusalem Post. "NASA adopted the algorithm originally developed by our graduates, who are the second generation of our original work."
The formulas save "billions of dollars," continued Ziv, "as the more data you have coming in, the larger the antenna farms you have to build. If the data is compressed, the number of antennas and the amount of space they cover is much smaller."
Dr. Jacob Ziv developed his mathematical formulas with Prof. Abraham Lempel, publishing their findings in three journal articles in the late 70’s. Ziv presently serves as the president of the Israel Academy of Sciences, and Lempel leads scientific research at Hewlett-Packard's R&D center in Haifa.
The Mars mission includes another Israel connection. A plaque is affixed to the sprit’s antenna that commemorates the astronauts killed in the space-shuttle Columbia disaster, including Israeli Col. Ilan Ramon.