LAUSR

This special issue collects a selection of papers concerning techniques for image compression and processing onboard of spacecraft. A preliminary version of some of the papers was presented at the 5th Onboard Payload Data Compression, organized by the European Space Agency and Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, and held in Frascati, Italy, on 28–29 September 2016. Onboard compression and processing is an increasingly important topic as the vast amounts of data collected by next-generation instruments have to compete with the scarce resources available for onboard processing and limited bandwidth for the transmission to the ground stations. The articles place particular emphasis on images, since the spatial, spectral, and radiometric resolutions of optical sensors are getting finer, and this calls for novel techniques in the fields of compression and efficient processing in order to maximize the onboard usage of the instruments and thus the scientific return.