I gather well see the collision in full-motion video (televised) because the event will be near enough. At what point is full-motion video no longer possible, i.e. at what distance from Earth?
We will not be able to observe the impact in “full motion video” (ie., at a rate of 30 frames/sec) because of data rate limitations both in the imaging cameras and in the data link from the spacecraft to Earth. The cameras are designed to make accurate scientific measurements, not primarily to produce video. As such, the imaging detectors are read out relatively slowly in order to keep the noise levels low, and the data are encoded to 14 bits to make the most accurate measurements possible. At their full frame format (1024×1024 pixels), the cameras will output only one frame every 1.7s. At impact and for the following few seconds, we plan to use subframe imaging modes (64×64 pixels in the Medium Resolution Instrument and 256×256 pixels in the High Resolution Instrument). With these formats, the cameras can produce frames at rates of about 20/sec for the MRI and 5/s for the HRI. So we will be able to reconstruct the impact itself with pretty good time resolution.
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