NASA expands Deep Space Network with giant new dish in California desert

NASA's long-distance spacecraft-calling network just got a boost.

The Deep Space Network (DSN), best known for communicating with distant spacecraft such as Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and New Horizons , added a 114-foot (34-meter) radio-frequency antenna in California, boosting capacity on the increasingly crowded network.

More than 40 spacecraft exploring the solar system and interstellar space use DSN, which has struggled to keep pace with growing demand.

Communications with the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission in 2022 and the crewed Artemis 2 mission in 2026 took priority as they traveled around the moon , substantially reducing the network's capacity to support other missions.

At least as early as 2021, managers were warning that despite ongoing efforts to add new antennas to DSN, the agency cannot reach all deep-space missions at once.

"We're trying to add capacity and more antennas, but we can't keep up with the demand that's currently out there, so missions should expect to be getting less availability," Brad Arnold, DSN manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said during a presentation attended by Space News .

Arnold also warned that the Artemis moon program would be "the gorilla in the room," because the astronauts by default have to be prioritized over robotic spacecraft: "That ultimately will affect our ability to service the rest of the missions." That's because the DSN is designed to serve both human and robotic deep-space spacecraft.

While JPL (then under contract to the U.S.

Army) had three spacecraft radio-tracking stations in Nigeria, Singapore, and California ready for the early space program in 1958, the DSN with more powerful dishes was established in December 1963 as "the de facto network for missions into deep space," state JPL materials from the 50th anniversary celebration in 2013.

The recently completed Deep Space Station 23 at the Deep Space Network's Goldstone complex near Barstow, California. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) The DSN helped relay communications from Apollo 11's historic moonwalk by NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong's on July 20, 1969, and has since supported countless milestones.

This includes images from Mars rovers starting in the 1990s and data showing that both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 crossed into interstellar space in the 2010s.

These days, Artemis isn't the only extra demand on DSN; other space agencies also use the network for their own spacecraft, to a much greater degree than 50 years ago as space exploration has matured.