Audio collage begins.
PHILIP BALDWIN
One of our biggest challenges is always going to be capacity, right?
JEFF BERNER
Always there is the push to get higher data rates because the instruments they put on spacecraft… they always can dump more data than the communication link can support.
AMY SMITH
You know, we’re going to continue to explore space. We’re going to continue to launch more and more missions. And we’re going to need more and more apertures.
PHILIP BALDWIN
We have to make sure that we have enough capacity… to support not only our sustained presence [at] the Moon, but future exploration goals to Mars.
Audio collage ends.
NARRATOR
NASA’s future is exciting. It’s full of next-generation science and exploration missions.
The Deep Space Network will provide critical support to the Artemis missions, which seek to establish a sustained human presence on the Moon with an eye toward human exploration of Mars. It’s a new age of crewed planetary exploration, one in which people from all backgrounds become the next generation of space heroes. The network will carry the voices of the next Neil Armstrong or Sally Ride as they take their first steps on gray lunar soil or the red Martian landscape.
The Deep Space Network also empowers present and future robotic missions, boldly venturing to distant locations across our solar system. The Parker Solar Probe recently touched the Sun, relying on Deep Space Network services as it hurtled through the solar atmosphere. NASA is planning new robotic missions to Venus, Earth’s hotter twin; Uranus, our solar system’s version of what might be the most numerous type of planet in the galaxy; and Europa and Enceladus, Jovian Moons that might harbor life in vast oceans. All of these will rely on the Deep Space Network.
But, NASA’s future is also filled with challenges to overcome.
There are so many deep space missions and rarely enough antennas to support the huge amounts of data they collect. To support next-generation science missions and crewed voyages to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, NASA’s Deep Space Network is embracing new technologies and capabilities while upgrading and enhancing their existing infrastructure.
Space Communications and Navigation program executive Philip Baldwin:
PHILIP BALDWIN
The Deep Space Network is going to play a critical role in supporting Artemis communications and human spaceflight. And so, we are looking at what we have to do to upgrade the network to support that.
And you think about Apollo: we’re talking about kilobits, at the top end megabits. Now we need gigabits… And so, we’ve got to look at what kind of data rates we need to enable in the network to support that.
NARRATOR
When most folks think of data rates, they think of their high-speed fiber optic internet, or 5G cellular service. These are services and capabilities that many take for granted.
NASA’s deep space missions don’t have that luxury. Establishing links with distant spacecraft presents unique challenges that must be met with precision. The farther out a mission goes, the more challenging it becomes.
Fortunately, the Deep Space Network is known for persistent innovation. As the agency prepares ever bolder human and robotic missions to the far reaches of the solar system, Artemis can be a proving ground for new technologies and capabilities.
PHILIP BALDWIN
But now we’re going to the Moon. We’re going back to the Moon. We want to make sure that we have that same type of connectivity as we land on the Moon. We want to see the video… So, we want to make sure that the general public can see this great work we’re doing when we land on the Moon, and get that video – get that science data back.
NARRATOR
In this episode, we’ll dive into the innovations and infrastructure projects assuring the proficiency and reliability of the Deep Space Network well into the future. New antennas, laser communications, networking innovation, and more will guide us ever deeper into the solar system.
The Invisible Network theme.
I’m Danny Baird. This is “The Invisible Network.”
…
A collage of historical audio
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
We choose to go to the Moon in this decade…
NEIL ARMSTRONG(Apollo 11)
That’s one small step for man…
COMMENTATOR(Voyager Launch)
We have ignition, and we have lift off!
CHILD FROM VOYAGER GOLDEN RECORDS
Hello from the children of planet Earth…
COMMENTATOR(Cassini Launch)
Three… two… one… and liftoff, of the Cassini spacecraft…
COMMENTATOR(Perseverance Landing)
Touchdown confirmed, Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars…
Theme music fades.
…
JEFF BERNER
Okay, I’m Jeff Berner and my formal title is: I’m the Deep Space Network (DSN) chief engineer.
I worry about interfacing with missions, ensuring that new capabilities and existing capabilities continue to meet requirements, help develop new requirements for new capabilities. I worry about how we’re going to pay for all of anything that we’re doing.
Just – kind of – the whole ball of wax so to speak.
NARRATOR
Jeff does have a lot to worry about. In many ways, the DSN’s success means the success of NASA’s mission of science and discovery. As interplanetary network director Suzanne Dodd reminds us:
SUZANNE DODD
We have over 50 missions – either that we’re supporting or are committed missions for us to support – and that requires a lot of assets.
NARRATOR
Many of those assets are the ones we’ve mentioned previously in this season: 70-meter antennas with decades of mission support under their belts – or, in this case: hydrostatic bearings. However, the network is building new infrastructure to meet the needs of future exploration.
AMY SMITH
My name is Amy Smith and I am the DSN aperture enhancement project manager…
So, the DSN aperture enhancement project is actually a fancy name for building more antennas throughout our network. So, the project overall is going to deliver six new antennas to the DSN network across the three different complexes.
The latest antennas that we were building were in Madrid. So I spent a lot of time going back and forth between here – California – and Madrid. The next antenna will be at the Goldstone facility, which is kind of in our backyard a few hours away from JPL. And eventually, I will end up building in Canberra, although I have not done that yet.
NARRATOR
The Deep Space Network inaugurated its newest antenna at the Madrid complex in March 2022. The inauguration included appearances from NASA and JPL leadership. The King of Spain was even there! It was a big moment for the Deep Space Network because:
AMY SMITH
As we look ahead to the projections that we have from NASA for future missions, we are just going to be supporting more and more missions…
Each time we add a brand-new antenna to the network, that adds more possible tracking hours… and that enables us to support more missions, support more tracking time, and bring in more data.
NARRATOR
There isn’t a one-to-one relationship between antennas built and missions the Deep Space Network can support. Each new antenna can support many missions, even at once!
AMY SMITH
So, we have something we call multiple spacecraft per aperture, which is where we can track more than one spacecraft — we can collect data from more than one spacecraft — with a single antenna. And then — in development — we have the opposite, where we could uplink data to multiple spacecraft with a single antenna.
NARRATOR
The new antennas that Amy is overseeing can support legacy missions, but they’re also constructed with an eye toward the cutting edge.
AMY SMITH
So, they come online generally with all of the old capabilities, and — when possible — we integrate new capabilities. Things like Ka-band are getting integrated into our antennas now. And we are working towards adding optical capabilities in the future as well…
Ka-band and optical allow us to get more data down in the same amount of time. So it essentially increases the throughput by using these higher frequency bands.
NARRATOR
Optical communications was the focus of this podcast’s last season, which highlighted the launch of NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration, or LCRD. Unlike traditional radio frequency communications, optical comm uses infrared lasers. By moving up the electromagnetic spectrum from radio to infrared, NASA’s networks can offer more bandwidth and more data.
JEFF BERNER
Always there is the push to get higher data rates because the instruments they put on spacecraft… they always can dump more data than the communication link can support.
NARRATOR
For a brief overview of how optical communications works, we turn to Deep Space Network project manager Brad Arnold.
BRAD ARNOLD
Fundamentally, a laser emits light, which is electromagnetic radiation at a very high frequency. It’s at optical frequencies…
An RF dish – an antenna dish – is basically a collector, or a focuser of energy… If you’re trying to talk to a friend across the street, you might have to cup your hands around your mouth, when you’re speaking loudly, or cup your hands around your ears to help collect the energy.
The size of that collection – its ability to collect – is related to the wavelength that’s coming at you. So, if the wavelength is very long, which corresponds to a very low frequency, the size of those cups need to be larger. So the cups on your ears and the cup around your mouth needs to be larger…
One way to think about it is your speaker at home. You might have a… woofer, and a tweeter, and a mid-range. Those are three very different size speakers, right? A woofer is typically a very big speaker. You can actually see it moving, and that’s very low frequency.
And so you can think of our big dishes, being…70-meters, are like a woofer of antennas. The optical is much higher frequency and so the apertures – in order to focus the exact same amount -…are much smaller. And so you can think of [it as a] tweeter.
NARRATOR
Exactly what sorts of data rates can optical communications’ higher frequencies offer missions? Interplanetary Network Directorate chief engineer Steve Lichten explains:
STEVE LICHTEN
Currently, the radio frequency data rates we get from Mars range from about one half to six megabits per second. We can get much higher data rates for missions that are closer. But for Mars – that’s a deep space distance – those are the rates we can provide now, but in the future with enhancements and going to higher frequencies like Ka-band the DSN could support as much as 250 megabits per second from Mars… And so that’s a big increase, that’s like a factor of 40 increase over what we typically do today.
Also, when we add optical communications – which we’re starting to build now, the first antenna at Goldstone that would have both optical and radio reception capabilities – that’s all in one single antenna – the optical aperture would be the equivalent of about eight meters. And it could achieve as much as a gigabit per second from Mars, which is about a factor of 200 times more than we can do at present.
NARRATOR
200 times more data sounds incredible, but optical communications doesn’t come without challenges:
STEVE LICHTEN
You know, one of the problems with optical is that you can have to cancel passes if there’s clouds, or weather, or rain. It’s pretty sensitive to even just the presence of clouds. So, being able to switch to a radio antenna that’s right there – even the same antenna – and doing maybe a less amount of data downlink, but still a significant amount is a great advantage. And the scheduling can be integrated as well.
But the one of the big advantages of putting the optical receive system inside the DSN radio antenna is cost savings because a standalone optical aperture costs about as much as a large optical telescope… We know what those cost, they’re extremely expensive… Whereas when we put it inside an existing DSN antenna, we already have the structure there… It’s nowhere near as expensive as the standalone optical aperture that typically is inside a dome.
NARRATOR
Designing these hybrid optical and radio systems requires innovative thinking. Optical communications hardware can be unforgiving:
BRAD ARNOLD
Optical terminals are typically much smaller. In principle, they should be easier to build and focus. But converse to that,…they need to be much more precise, because they’re working at optical frequencies. Rather than a… dish, which might be coarse and just stamped out of metal, now you’re talking about a mirror that… needs to be much more precisely manufactured.
NARRATOR
While the LCRD mission is demonstrating optical communications capabilities for low-Earth orbit spacecraft, NASA is preparing to showcase the technology farther from Earth with the Deep Space Optical Communications instrument, or DSOC.
SUZANNE DODD
It’s literally a laser: a high-powered laser that’s going to fly on the Psyche mission. And we’re going to test the performance of that laser out to about Mars distances and see if we can communicate using optical communications. The laser points at mirrors on the ground and the mirrors focus the laser light.
NARRATOR
Psyche – currently under review – plans to make a 280-million-mile journey to a unique metal asteroid that scientists believe will help us better understand the formation of our solar system.
…
NARRATOR
While optical communications improves data rates, another networking innovation in development may help the Deep Space Network improve data returns. You might remember it from episode 13 of this podcast, when we heard from Dr. Vint Cerf, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist.
Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking uses a store-and-forward bundle protocol to provide internet-like services in deep space. Steve Lichten explains:
STEVE LICHTEN
The interplanetary network is already becoming sort of internet-like… where… you make connections automatically… Right now, it is much more manual with these long distances that we have to form these links over…
But there’s a new protocol called Delay Tolerant Networking, or DTN for short, which enables interplanetary links to function much in the same way as terrestrial internet connections do. But the Delay Tolerant Networking factors in the long light travel time delays, which could be minutes to hours across the solar system. So that’s a special kind of internet that has to be enhanced over what we are used to on the ground, where the delays are much, much shorter. I mean, maybe fractions of a second…
So in the Delay Tolerant Networking system, spacecraft or ground station can function much like what we currently use internet routers for. So, they can collect data and send it on, and store it – if necessary – until something comes into view. So that’s a big advancement that’s enabling things to be handled in a more automated way.
…
NARRATOR
Not all of the infrastructure and technology projects preparing the DSN for the future are as glamorous as brand-new antennas. Multiple spacecraft per aperture, optical communications, DTN, and even the antenna arraying capabilities we discussed earlier this season: they’re super exciting, but even a fresh coat of paint can be important to mission success. The Deep Space Network is a vital national resource that requires persistent maintenance to continue empowering spacecraft with mission-critical communications and navigation services.
PHILIP BALDWIN
You can imagine after 50-some years the amount of aging infrastructure that there is. And so, we’re taking on an initiative called “Road to Green” that’s going to look at all of the tasks that we had to defer… and we’re looking at bringing them to the forefront and funding those tasks.
This is things that we don’t really talk about [because they] aren’t glorious, like plumbing… We need to have that. We’ve got to have water lines, we have to have facilities: power, electrical. A lot of this stuff is infrastructure that we need to upgrade.
And we’re taking on this initiative, “Road to Green,” to upgrade that infrastructure: bring our facilities back to a level where it’s advanced, it’s going to be reliable, continuing on… another 50 to 60 years in the future.
…
NARRATOR
Another part of preparing for the future is enhancing the capabilities of NASA’s other network, the Near Space Network, managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. While the Deep Space Network is designed to support far-off missions, Goddard network services have typically focused on missions closer to Earth.
Now, the Near Space Network is expanding the volume of space it can support, leveraging a combination of commercial and government ground stations worldwide. It isn’t planning on providing communications nearly as far out as the Deep Space Network, but the Near Space Network is seeking to expand their domain out to about a million miles away. That would include lunar missions and even out to the Lagrange points, stable orbits between Earth and the Sun where NASA parks science observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope.
The Deep Space Network has a unique ability to support missions at Mars and further afield. Enhancements to the Near Space Network will allow the DSN to focus on robotic and crewed missions in deep space, powering new discoveries about our solar system.
…
The Invisible Network theme.
NARRATOR
The story of NASA is one of ambition. It is one of evolution. It’s a story of wonder and discovery that extends back to the early days of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and will continue far into the future.
Humanity’s drive to probe the cosmos – and ability to do so – continues to grow. All the while, Deep Space Network professionals will work in the background, enhancing and expanding the oft-invisible systems that make space exploration possible.
AMY SMITH
You know, we’re going to continue to explore space. We’re going to continue to launch more and more missions. And we’re going to need more and more apertures. We’re going to need more capabilities. We’re going to need to make them more efficient. We’re going to need to make them smaller, faster, cheaper. And so, I think there’s going to be lots of opportunities for development and innovation over the next decade or more.
PHILIP BALDWIN
We have to make sure that we have enough capacity… to support not only our sustained presence [at] the Moon, but future exploration goals to Mars.
NARRATOR
Thank you for listening. Do you want to connect with us? The Invisible Network team is collecting questions about NASA’s Deep Space Network from listeners like you! We’re putting together a panel of NASA experts from across the Space Communications and Navigation community to answer your questions.
If you would like to participate, navigate over to NASA SCaN on Twitter or Facebook and ask your question using the hashtag AskSCaN. That’s @ NASA SCaN, N-A-S-A-S-C-A-N, on social media, with the hashtag AskSCaN, A-S-K-S-C-A-N.
This Deep Space Network-focused season of “The Invisible Network” debuted in summer of 2022. Developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the Deep Space Network is managed by JPL with funding and strategic oversight from the Space Communications and Navigation, or SCaN, program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
This podcast is produced by SCaN at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with episodes written and recorded by me, Danny Baird. Editorial support is provided by Katherine Schauer and JPL’s Laurance Fauconnet. Our public affairs officer is Lora Bleacher.
Special thanks to Fall 2021 interns Julia Adde and Nate Thomas, Barbara Adde, SCaN Policy and Strategic Communications director, and all those who have lent their time, talent, and expertise to making “The Invisible Network” a reality. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.
For transcripts of episodes, visit NASA.gov/invisible. To learn more about the vital role that space communications plays in NASA’s mission, visit NASA.gov/SCaN. For more NASA podcast offerings, visit NASA.gov/podcasts. There, you can check out “On a Mission,” the official podcast of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.