information:highlighting, information:filtering, structural:expansion, information:classification
Space transmission

One significant application of Reed–Solomon coding was to encode the digital pictures sent back by the Voyager program.

Voyager introduced Reed–Solomon coding concatenated with convolutional codes, a practice that has since become very widespread in deep space and satellite (e.g., direct digital broadcasting) communications.

Viterbi decoders tend to produce errors in short bursts. Correcting these burst errors is a job best done by short or simplified Reed–Solomon codes.

Modern versions of concatenated Reed–Solomon/Viterbi-decoded convolutional coding were and are used on the Mars Pathfinder, Galileo, Mars Exploration Rover and Cassini missions, where they perform within about 1–1.5 dB of the ultimate limit, the Shannon capacity.

These concatenated codes are now being replaced by more powerful turbo codes: