A giant antenna used to communicate with Mars spacecraft and track near-Earth asteroids has been offline for nearly two months. NASA has shared little information about the damage caused to the 230-foot-wide radio antenna, while repair methods remain unclear even as the government shutdown ends.
The largest antenna at the Deep Space Network (DSN) site in Goldstone, California, went dark on Sept. 16 due to excessive rotation, which put pressure on the cabling and piping at its center, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement to SpaceNews. The antenna’s fire suppression system tubes were also damaged, resulting in flooding and water damage.
“The antenna remains offline as board members, engineers and technicians evaluate the structure and make recommendations and repairs,” JPL’s statement continued. “NASA will provide information about the board’s findings and next steps to return the antenna to service after the federal government reopens.”
Gizmodo contacted JPL but did not receive a response prior to publication.
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NASA relies on huge radio antennas spread across different parts of the world to communicate with its interplanetary spacecraft. The DSN is composed of three deep space communications facilities, one located at Goldstone in the Mojave Desert, California, the second near Madrid, Spain, and the third near Canberra, Australia. The locations are strategically placed approximately 120 degrees apart to ensure that at any given time, one or more of these facilities can communicate with a spacecraft as the Earth rotates around its 360-degree axis.
NASA installed its own network of antennas in 1963; It is currently operating at capacity. A 2023 report by NASA’s Office of Inspector General revealed that DSN needed an upgrade, as demand for its radio antennas at times exceeded supply by 40%. This means that ongoing space missions are requesting more time than the current capacity of the network.
The recently damaged antenna, known as DSS-14, received its first signal from NASA’s Mariner 4 mission, the first spacecraft to successfully fly by Mars, on March 18, 1966. Later in 1988, DSS-14, named Mars Station, was expanded from a 210-foot (64-meter) dish to 230 feet (70 meters) wide in preparation for the encounter with Voyager 2. Neptune. The antenna was also used to communicate with Voyager 1 after it entered interstellar space in 2012.
Due to its high sensitivity, DSS-14 is critical for sending commands and receiving data from missions operating in deep space. Scientists also use antennas to track near-Earth asteroids and measure their sizes and trajectories. The antenna shutdown has placed additional pressure on the rest of NASA’s communications network.
The 2023 report forecasts that demand for DSN antennas will grow dramatically over the coming decade, with capacity exceeding 50% by 2030. A major contributing factor to the growing demand is NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to send a manned mission to the Moon and back as early as February 2026.
The first Artemis mission, which NASA plans to launch in November 2022, required 903 hours of DSN time, while the mission’s secondary payload (eight CubeSats) required an additional 871 hours. With this in mind, it’s hard to imagine Artemis 2 launching with one of the larger antennas out of service.
Although DSN antennas rarely fail, this has happened before. The DSN complex in Madrid suffered an outage from June 2006 to early 2007 due to loss of telemetry data due to heavy rain, while the antenna in Australia underwent an 11-month upgrade starting in 2020 and lasting until 2021. It’s unclear how long it will take to refurbish DSS-14, but NASA is on a tight deadline before the first Artemis crew launch early next year.