NASA’s Deep Space Network welcomes a new dish to the family

“After the long commissioning process, the best performing 34 meter antenna in DSN is now talking to our spacecraft,” said Bradford Arnold, DSN project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “While the pandemic restrictions and recent weather conditions in Spain have been significant challenges, the staff in Madrid have persevered, and I am proud to welcome the DSS-56 to the global DSN family.

Learn more about the Deep Space network

Apart from Spain, the Deep Space Network has ground stations in California (Goldstone) and Australia (Canberra). This configuration allows mission controllers to communicate with spacecraft throughout the solar system at any time during the Earth’s rotation.

The precursor to DSN was established in January 1958 when JPL was contracted by the US military to deploy portable radio tracking stations in California, Nigeria and Singapore to receive telemetry from the first successful US satellite, Explorer 1. Shortly after the transfer of JPL to NASA on December 3, 1958, America’s new civilian space program established the Deep Space Network to communicate with all distant space missions. It has been operating continuously since 1963 and remains the backbone of space communications for NASA and international missions, supporting historic events such as the Apollo Moon landings and the recording of our interstellar explorers, Voyager 1 and 2.

The Deep Space Network is managed by JPL for SCaN, which is located at NASA Headquarters within the Directorate of Exploration and Human Operations Missions. The Madrid station is managed on behalf of NASA by the Spanish national research organization, the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (National Institute of Aerospace Technology).