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Managing Mission Operations
Published in M. Ann Garrison Darrin, Patrick A. Stadter, Aerospace Project Management Handbook, 2017
The mission concept largely determines the ground antenna system needed for communications. For missions leaving Earth orbit, deep space antenna complexes are needed. The most well-known is the Deep Space Network (DSN) managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Other agencies having ground antennas that can be used are the antenna complexes managed by ESA (European Space Agency), ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization), and JAXA (Japanese Space Agency). For space assets that remain in Earth orbit in addition to those mentioned, there are ground antennas operated by SSC Space U.S. Inc. (formerly Universal Space Network (USN)), SANSA (South African National Space Association), and other individual ground antennas. Once the ground antenna complex(es) are selected, ground software must be developed to provide the interface between the ground antenna complex and the MOC. Additionally, the mission operations team needs to be trained in the ground antenna scheduling process. Missions usually have a signed agreement with the communications provider, and the PM works with the mission operations expert to establish the agreement for antenna communications support.
Elements of the Technology
Published in Thomas B. Sheridan, Telepresence: Actual and Virtual, 2023
Deep space communication. Spacecraft send information and pictures back to Earth using the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN), a collection of big radio antennas. The antennas also receive details about where the spacecraft are located, and how they are doing healthwise. NASA also uses the DSN to send lists of instructions to the spacecraft. Ground segment facilities located in the United States, Spain, and Australia support NASA's interplanetary spacecraft missions. For example, Deep Space Station (DSS) 43, the 70 m antenna at the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, has a K-band radio astronomy system covering a 10-GHz bandwidth at 17–27 GHz (https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/dsn-antennas/en/).
Case Study: Interplanetary Networks
Published in Aloizio Pereira da Silva, Scott Burleigh, Katia Obraczka, Delay and Disruption Tolerant Networks, 2019
Aloizio P. Silva, Scott Burleigh
The Deep Space Network (DSN) is a network of antennas used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States to track data and control navigation of interplanetary spacecrafts. It was designed to allow for continuous radio communication with spacecraft and has its origin in the Deep Space Instrumentation Facility (DSIF) constructed around 1963. NASA established the concept of DSIF as a separately managed and operated communications system that would accommodate all deep space missions, thereby avoiding the need for each flight project to acquire and operate its own specialized space communications network. In this context DSN has become the core space communication system deployed by NASA. It consists of antenna arrays allowing the spacecraft teams to control unmanned space probes in Earth’s orbit or beyond as well as to exchange data with NASA’s missions in space. It is formed by a set of three communication complexes with 16 huge and advanced antennas. These three antenna complexes, located in Goldstone - California - USA, Madrid - Spain, and Canberra - Australia, make up the DSN as shown in Figure 4.8. All three facilities are administrated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, with USA based antennas located at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC) in the Mojave Desert. The three complexes are placed 120 degrees longitude apart to enable light-of-sight to be sustained between spacecraft and the DSN continuously. Each complex is equipped with one 34 meter diameter high efficiency antenna, one 34 meter beam waveguide antenna, one 26 meter antenna, one 70 meter antenna and one 11 meter antenna.
What is technology?
Published in Annals of Science, 2020
The scale of achievement, if you excuse the pun, has been extraordinary. A scientist at a desk in Pasadena can make a few changes to lines of code as represented on the screen before her – a human-scale technology. Running the code makes electrons move through logic gates in the semiconductor substrate, activating signals to pass via wires and then, oscillating through the transmission aerial of a Deep Space Network substation, producing electromagnetic waves that move outwards until, 18 h later, way beyond the orbit of Neptune, electrons are nudged within the Voyager 1 spacecraft. A returning signal produces new data on another screen in Pasadena. This is the reach of modern science and the scales of intervention of modern technology: intervening and representing at scales human but also at what the philosopher Alfred Nordmann calls the ‘uncanny’ scales of the very very small and the very very large.5
Novel Deep Space Nuclear Electric Propulsion Spacecraft
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2021
Troy Howe, Steve Howe, Jack Miller
Situated behind these radiators are four large xenon propellant tanks that house all the propellant for a journey to Europa. These propellant tanks as well as the radiation shield behind them protect the vital electronics and CubeSat payload from the ionizing radiation originating from the nano-reactor. A large high-gain antenna used for communicating with Earth via the deep space network is situated at the rear of the spacecraft.