The addition brings new capabilities to the network, which acts as an interplanetary switchboard, connecting us to missions at the Moon and far beyond. A powerful new antenna has been added to the NASA Space Communications and Navigation's Deep Space Network (DSN), which connects us to the space robots exploring our solar system. Called Deep Space Station 56, or DSS-56, the dish is now online and ready to communicate with a variety of missions, including NASA's Perseverance rover when it lands on the Red Planet next month.

The new 34-meter-wide (112-foot-wide) dish has been under construction at the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex in Spain since 2017. Existing antennas are limited in the frequency bands they can receive and transmit, often restricting them to communicating only with specific spacecraft. DSS-56 is the first to use the Deep Space Network's full range of communication frequencies as soon as it went online. This means DSS-56 is an "all-in-one" antenna that can communicate with all the missions that the DSN supports and can be used as a backup for any of the Madrid complex's other antennas.

"DSS-56 offers the Deep Space Network additional real-time flexibility and reliability," said Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator and program manager of NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN). "This new asset symbolizes and underscores our ongoing support for more than 30 deep space missions who count on our services to enable their success."

With the addition of DSS-56 and other 34-meter antennas to all three DSN complexes around the world, the network is preparing to play a critical role in ensuring communication and navigation support for upcoming Moon and Mars missions and the crewed Artemis missions.

"The Deep Space Network is vital to so much of what we do - and to what we plan to do - throughout the solar system. It's what connects us here on Earth to our distant robotic explorers, and, with the improvements that we're making to the network, it connects us to the future as well, expanding our capabilities as we prepare human missions for the Moon and beyond," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA's headquarters in Washington. "This latest antenna was built as an international partnership and will ultimately benefit all of humanity as we continue to explore deep space."

With DSS-56's increased flexibility came a more complex start-up phase, which included testing and calibration of a larger suite of systems, before the antenna could go online. On Friday, Jan. 22, the international partners who oversaw the antenna's construction attended a virtual ribbon-cutting event to officially mark the occasion - an event that had been delayed due to historic snowfall blanketing much of Spain.

"After the lengthy process of commissioning, the DSN's most capable 34-meter antenna is now talking with our spacecraft," said Bradford Arnold, DSN project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "Even though pandemic restrictions and the recent weather conditions in Spain have been significant challenges, the staff in Madrid persevered, and I am proud to welcome DSS-56 to the global DSN family."

Related Links
NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN)
Space Technology News - Applications and Research

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China launches antenna array for Mars, moon missions
Beijing (XNA) Nov 19, 2020
China has launched its first array of giant radio antennas to support missions to Mars and the moon, sources with the Xi'an Satellite Control Center said on Wednesday. After nearly two years of construction, the deep-space antenna array system was built at the control center's Kashgar station in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. It consists of four 35-meter-diameter antennas, three of which are newly built. Its data reception capability is equivalent to that of an antenna with a diame ... read more

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