NASA adds giant Deep Space Network dish

NASA’s latest Deep Space Network update is less about a brand-new program than about capacity. A new 34-meter antenna, designated Deep Space Station 23, has been completed at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California, according to NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The dish expands the agency’s main communications system for spacecraft operating far beyond Earth orbit. NASA says the Deep Space Network, or DSN, supports more than 40 spacecraft across the solar system and into interstellar space. ### Where is the new dish, exactly? Goldstone is NASA’s California node in the Deep Space Network, a three-site system that also includes complexes near Madrid and Canberra. The new antenna, DSS-23, sits in the Mojave Desert near Barstow and is managed by JPL for NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation program. NASA described DSS-23 as a beam-waveguide radio-frequency antenna. (jpl.nasa.gov) That design routes signals through mirrors and enclosed waveguides to electronics in a protected pedestal room, a layout NASA has used in newer DSN antennas to improve maintenance and operating flexibility. ### Why does NASA need another Deep Space Network antenna? NASA says the Deep Space Network is the agency’s primary system for communicating with spacecraft in deep space, handling both command uplinks and science-data downlinks. (jpl.nasa.gov) The network’s workload has grown as NASA and partner missions have expanded, and the agency says the system now supports more than 40 missions. (nasa.gov) The 34-meter dish adds tracking and communications capacity at a time when NASA is operating missions at Mars, around the outer planets, and beyond Pluto’s orbit. NASA did not, in the material it published on the new antenna, assign DSS-23 to a single spacecraft; it presented the dish as additional infrastructure for the broader DSN schedule. ### Is this the “giant” dish people are talking about? (jpl.nasa.gov) The new antenna is large, but it is not the biggest class of DSN dish. NASA’s update says DSS-23 is 34 meters, or 114 feet, wide. That makes it part of the network’s modern 34-meter fleet rather than the older 70-meter class antennas that remain the largest individual dishes in the system. NASA imagery published with the announcement shows DSS-23 alongside other Goldstone antennas, including three other 34-meter dishes and the retired 26-meter “Apollo Antenna.” The agency said DSS-23 is the recently completed antenna visible in the foreground of a Goldstone panorama released last week. (jpl.nasa.gov) ### Was this a new announcement or the completion of an existing project? (jpl.nasa.gov) JPL’s publication describes a ribbon-cutting for a completed antenna rather than the start of construction. NASA had previously documented the dish during its buildout, including a 2024 image note saying DSS-23 would come online in 2026 as the fifth of six new beam-waveguide antennas planned for the network. (science.nasa.gov) That timeline helps explain the social-media wording around NASA “adding” a dish. The underlying development is a long-running DSN modernization effort, and this week’s milestone is the completion and ceremonial debut of one more operational antenna at Goldstone. ### How does this connect to the Mars science people were also sharing? The Mars item circulating alongside the DSN post appears to refer to separate Perseverance findings, not to the antenna itself. (jpl.nasa.gov) NASA has recently published Perseverance updates on ancient Martian rocks in Jezero Crater, including work on very old impact-built layers and earlier reporting on organic-bearing and chemically unusual rocks that scientists say warrant further study. Perseverance depends on the same deep-space communications architecture that DSN upgrades are meant to support. NASA’s published material on DSS-23 does not link the new antenna to a specific Mars result, but the network is the path by which rover data, images and science observations are returned to Earth. ### What comes next at Goldstone? NASA said DSS-23 has been completed and added to the Goldstone complex now, with the station joining a network that operates continuously across California, Spain and Australia. (jpl.nasa.gov) Earlier NASA documentation said the antenna would be the fifth of six new beam-waveguide dishes added to the DSN, indicating the broader modernization program is still continuing beyond this milestone. (jpl.nasa.gov)