The TOLIMAN Space Telescope: processing data on the edge

The TOLIMAN Space Telescope is a University of Sydney-led project aiming to discover Earth-sized planets around Alpha Centauri. The telescope has a novel diffractive pupil design that will allow TOLIMAN to detect tiny changes in the positions of the two stars in the system, down to a millionth of a pixel in scale. A key challenge for the mission is the data volume. The telescope will take an image ten times per second, generating 5 TB/day of raw data. However, the mission will only be able to down-link approximately 5 GB/day and store 500 GB at any one time. In this talk, we will present the methods we are using to compress and process data as it is collected while minimising information loss. We will share challenges faced and lessons learned with potential applications to other edge computing projects.