Herschel/PACS on-board reduction/compression software implementation

This paper describes the design and implementation of the on-board data compression and reduction software for the HERSCHEL1/PACS(2) mission (see also A. Poglitsch et al. in this conference) of the European Space Agency (ESA). Lead by the A-lax Planck Institute for Extraterrestric Physics (MPE) in Garching. Austrian scientists and software engineers participate in the development of the on-board software(3) for the Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS). The novel detectors' high data rates in addition to the distant spacecraft orbit force us to carry out irreversible reduction steps that are normally done on ground and to use highly specialized compression algorithms for lossless compression of the reduced science and the header data.