Communicating through deep space

NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) consists of a worldwide set of communication stations and a central control facility in California, enabling communication with spacecraft thousands of millions of miles from earth. The stations have gone from 26 m diameter antennas operating at 960 MHz to 70 m diameter (by 1988) at 8400 MHz. The DSN provides exceptional performance in high gain steerable antennas, ultra-low noise receivers, high power transmitters, frequency and time standards, and precise radio metric data. Spacecraft missions envisaged in the 1990's for the continuing exploration of the Solar System include an array of increasingly complex visits to the inner planets, asteroids and comets and the outer planets. The Deep Space Network planned for the mid-1980s may not meet all the needs of these missions without substantial change. Deep space stations may require conversion to operation with beam waveguides, higher frequency and relative frequency stability of 10 to the -16th. A deep space relay station in earth orbit could permit operation at higher frequencies, with attendant higher performance. Long range planning to select the appropriate future network configurations and develop the technologies essential to their implementation is underway.