It was he who sat down with Glenn Taylor, and, in a matter of a few days, conjured up the majority of detailed manufacturing specifications. Jumping ahead in our story, it is interesting to note that after nearly two Earth years of operation on the surface of Mars the cameras are still performing according to their original specifications. Certain camera characteristics were dictated by spacecraft constraints. Notable among these were weight, power, and bit rate. The first two are obvious, but the third deserves some comment.
Cameras generate a great deal of information in a very short time.
This implies some mechanism for storing all that information. In a conventional camera the film is that storage device. In a television camera system the data is generally stored on magnetic tape. When the Viking mission was conceived, it was known that the entire spacecraft would have to be sterilized to avoid the possibility of carrying any Earth organisms to Mars. The procedure adopted was heat sterilization.