Lossless coding standards for space data systems

The International Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) is preparing to issue its first recommendation for a digital data compression standard. Because the space data systems of primary interest are employed to support scientific investigations requiring accurate representation, this initial standard will be restricted to lossless compression. In particular the demonstrated breadth of applicability and high performance of what has become known as "The Rice Algorithms", has led the CCSDS to recommend a version of these algorithms. The key algorithmic and performance characteristics that have driven the development of this recommendation are discussed.