Assuming “lossless”, the main reason is you don’t want to “lose” information. For example, if someone wanted to actually use this picture to geo-reference (or would it be Lunar-reference =p) a particular reference a particular feature, you would want it to be accurate. Specific use case: you found some ice, and want to know exactly where it was, as well as composition. If you didn’t use a lossless format, you wouldn’t have confidence it wasn’t as artifact of the compression.

Edit: misstated Leo instead of lunar, Leo is low earth orbit

> LOSELESS

Lossless

you lose less with a lossless codec

I'm glad you didn't write "loose less".

Well, a lossless codec loses less information and so it's less loose with the pixel data :)