An advanced imaging communication system (AICS) for planetary exploration is presented., The system offers "end-to-end" information rate improvements of 3 to 5 times over existing systems in addition to extensive user flexibility to adapt his rate/fidelity priorities to fit a particular mission. AICS contains two major system elements. The first is a concatenated Reed-Solomon/Viterbi coded channel. This provides a powerful, yet practical, solution to the usual "error vulnerability" problem associated with compressed data. The second major element is an extremely adaptive image data compression algorithm called RM2. The details of this algorithm as presently simulated are discussed in considerable detail. Used in conjunction with the virtually error free performance of the Reed-Solomon/Viterbi channel the stated AICS advantages are obtained.