Did the data rate using the Low Gain Antenna get any higher than 10 bits per second?
Following the first in-flight system software update, Galileo’s top data rate rose to 16 bits per second. This was boosted following the final update to the system software in May of 1996 to 160 bits per second. But Galileo didn’t always communicate at such a high bit rate: the actual achieveable data rate depended on a variety of factors, including the Earth-spacecraft distance, how close Galileo and the Sun appear to be in the sky when seen from Earth, and the geometry between the spacecraft and the Deep Space Network antennas that are tracking Galileo. Most of Galileo’s data were sent to Earth using a downlink rate of 80 bits per second (the average value is closer to 50 bits per second, but this includes periods when the Sun is directly between Earth and Jupiter, and when the data rate consequently plummets). Keep in mind that a great deal of the science data was compressed before being sent down to Earth, boosting the effective data rate significantly.
