Space questions, answered
What is the Deep Space Network? (How does NASA talk to spacecraft?)
The Deep Space Network is NASA's set of giant radio antennas — its tracking facilities — that communicate with and navigate spacecraft across the Solar System. Three sites spread around the globe keep every distant probe in view as Earth turns.
The three complexes sit roughly 120 degrees apart in longitude — Goldstone in California, near Madrid in Spain, and near Canberra in Australia — so that as the Earth rotates, a spacecraft is always within reach of at least one of them. The largest dishes are 70 metres across.
Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the network sends commands out and receives the faint signals back from missions as far away as the Voyager probes, more than 24 billion km out, whose signal arrives at a tiny fraction of a billionth of a watt. It handles the science data, the tracking, and the precise navigation that keeps deep-space missions on course.
The Listening Room — the Deep Space Network, live right now →The deep-space fleet it talks to →
People also ask
How does NASA communicate with spacecraft?
Chiefly through the Deep Space Network — large radio antennas that send commands and receive data over X-band and other radio frequencies.
Where are NASA's tracking stations?
The Deep Space Network's three sites are at Goldstone (California), Madrid (Spain), and Canberra (Australia) — about a third of the world apart.
Sources: NASA JPL — Deep Space Network