One thing that seems missing to me is that while the probe might send 160 bits/sec of useful data, those bits are not sent directly as such[1]: The TMU encodes

One thing that seems missing to me is that while the probe might send 160 bits/sec of useful data, those bits are not sent directly as such[1]: The TMU encodes the high rate data stream with a convolutional code having constraint length of 7 and a symbol rate equal to twice the bit rate (k=7, r=1/2). So the effective symbol rate is 320 baud[2], and thus a factor of two should be included in the calculations from what I can gather. Note that the error correction was changed after Jupiter to use Reed-Solomon[3] (255,223) to lower the effective bit error rate, so effectively I guess the data rate is more like 140 bps. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20130215195832/http://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/DPSummary/Descanso4--Voyager_new.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20130215195832/http://descanso.j... [2]: https://destevez.net/2021/09/decoding-voyager-1/ https://destevez.net/2021/09/decoding-voyager-1/ [3]: https://destevez.net/2021/12/voyager-1-and-reed-solomon/ https://destevez.net/2021/12/voyager-1-and-reed-solomon/