QUESTION:
What is the fate of the scientific data once it reaches Earth?
Does NASA have one computer center that collects data and distributes it to
the institutions that cooperate? What kind of data processing is done on
Earth?

ANSWER from Donna Shirley on July 28, 1997:
All the information comes into the 34 or 70 meter antennas of the Deep Space
Network and is transmitted via satellite to mission operations at JPL.  All
of the scientists on Pathfinder are at JPL while the mission is going on so
that they can participate in analyzing the data quickly so that the mission
can be directed based on what has been learned.

The scientists can also take data home to work on it.  There are many kinds
of data processing with many different sets of software for engineering and
science data.