Audio problems in space

Communication channel capacity is almost invariably at a premium between space vehicles and the earth. In the Apollo moon exploration program, plans call for the use of a special audio processing technique to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio. Extremely deep space probes such as the Mars Mariner IV now use very low bit rate transmissions because of signal-to-noise considerations: future manned planetary missions will benefit greatly from effective speech bandwidth compression techniques. This paper,calls attention to the interest in speech processing in future space exploration programs.