Avalanche The Incredible Data Stream of SDO

When NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) leaves Earth in November 2009 onboard an Atlas V rocket, the thunderous launch will trigger an avalanche.Mission planners are bracing themselves -- not for rocks or snow, but an avalanche of data."SDO will beam back 150 million bits of data per second, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md