NASA pushed its Deep Space Network beyond its limits during the Artemis I mission nearly four years ago. The global array of deep space communications antennas couldn\u2019t keep up with the routine demands of 40 robotic science missions and the extraordinary surge required by NASA\u2019s Orion space capsule as it flew around the Moon.<\/p>\n
The experience in late 2022 reduced or delayed downlinks from several high-profile science missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope and Mars rovers, as the data-hungry Artemis I mission took priority on NASA\u2019s communications network. And that was before the first Artemis mission with astronauts onboard. When Artemis II launched April 1, NASA called upon the Deep Space Network (DSN) again to connect Mission Control to the Orion capsule as it soared more than a quarter of a million miles from Earth.<\/p>\n
With a crew of four flying inside the spacecraft, the agency\u2019s appetite for data from Orion on Artemis II was even higher than it was on Artemis I. But at a little more than nine days, the Artemis II mission was shorter than the 25 days Artemis I spent in space, helping alleviate the communications overload. Artemis I also launched 10 small CubeSats into deep space, many of which required tracking and telecom services from the DSN. Artemis II carried fewer CubeSats.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe learned a lot on Artemis I, and we actually put some new processes in place ahead of Artemis II, mostly focused around coordination and our scheduling processes with all the missions, not just the Orion vehicle itself,\u201d said Greg Heckler, deputy program manager for capability development in NASA\u2019s Space Communications and Navigation Program. \u201cI think that worked well.\u201d<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
Heckler said NASA\u2019s science division, responsible for most of the missions using the DSN, provided the network\u2019s managers with \u201cpositive feedback\u201d after Artemis II. But the limitations of the network and the high demand continue to \u201ccreate some asset contention\u201d among NASA\u2019s missions.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring Artemis I, we had a subsystem called the Private Cloud Appliance. This PCA actually failed during Artemis I. Because of that failure, that high visibility, we actually received some additional resources from our Moon to Mars program, and we were able to install, effectively, a new subsystem ahead of Artemis II,\u201d Heckler said.<\/p>\n
The demand for signal is only going up. NASA and its commercial and international partners plan to launch numerous missions to the Moon in the next few years. NASA is working with commercial providers to construct ground antennas for a dedicated network for Moon missions, called Lunar Exploration Ground Sites (LEGS), to free up more capacity on the DSN to support other spacecraft. Commercial companies are also developing data relay satellites to fly in orbit around the Moon, supporting future landers and construction of a Moon Base. High-bandwidth optical communications may be another solution. NASA successfully tested a laser communications terminal on the Orion spacecraft on Artemis II.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to work as a community to deal with that higher level of contention during the Artemis missions themselves, but we\u2019re doing everything to establish non-DSN, or new infrastructure, to take on that load and burden,\u201d Heckler said Wednesday in a meeting of the Small Bodies Assessment Group.<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
The burden currently includes around 40 operating missions that rely on the DSN\u2019s antennas in California, Spain, and Australia to stay in communication with Earth. Most of NASA\u2019s missions outlive their original design lives, so they put demand on the network for longer as the agency launches new spacecraft.<\/p>\n
About 40 more missions are projected to need the DSN over the next 10 years, and many of the 40 missions currently using time on the network will likely still be operating over that time. One of NASA\u2019s most data-intensive missions, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, is scheduled for launch in August. It will return more data through the DSN than all of NASA\u2019s previous astrophysics missions combined.<\/p>\n
The 10 CubeSats that launched as secondary payloads on Artemis I placed an unforeseen burden on the DSN. Some of the small satellites were lost soon after deploying from the rocket, and their operators called upon the DSN to use its giant antennas to search for the CubeSats as they headed into deep space, further exacerbating the communications crunch the network was already experiencing with the Orion spacecraft.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore onboarding new missions to the DSN, we now strictly require a feasibility study to see if there\u2019s enough capacity to make that type of commitment,\u201d Heckler said. \u201cSo we\u2019re trying to balance, through data and analysis, the new demands coming onto the system versus those legacy missions we have to support until they fly out due to natural causes.\u201d<\/p>\n
DSN managers are also working with NASA\u2019s older missions, some of which continue to pull on the network decades after their launch, to understand how much capacity they will use. As these older missions got extended, some of them did not update the network on their needs. \u201cSome missions are using more than what their paperwork would say,\u201d Heckler said.<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce that is in place, as we move forward with new mission commitments, we will just be more focused, I think, and more process-oriented in being able to commit to new missions or not,\u201d Heckler said.<\/p>\n
One constraint on the DSN is an accident last year that knocked one of the network\u2019s three 70-meter (230-foot) antennas offline at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California. This antenna, along with similar ones in Spain and Australia, is used to communicate with some of NASA\u2019s most distant missions.<\/p>\n
The 70-meter dish was tracking NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft at Jupiter last September when it \u201cover-rotated\u201d and damaged cables and water lines in the facility\u2019s fire suppression system. An estimated 200,000 gallons of water flooded the base of the antenna. The water contained glycol, causing it to be classified as an environmental hazard, officials wrote in a report after investigating the accident. The resulting flooding rendered the antenna inoperable.<\/p>\n
Investigators cited several technical and process causes. After troubleshooting a problem with the antenna\u2019s emergency stops, technicians at Goldstone \u201coverrode and bypassed multiple safeguards that normally would have prevented over-rotation,\u201d officials wrote in the report.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe investigation revealed inadequate training, insufficient written procedures, a reliance on undocumented behaviors and tacit knowledge, and deficiencies in the antenna\u2019s control logic,\u201d officials wrote. \u201cIn addition to the root causes listed above, the hydraulic limit system\u2014the final fail safe against over-rotation\u2014was discovered to have been severely damaged to the point of inoperability in an unknown and undocumented prior incident.\u201d<\/p>\n
Work logs indicated the hydraulic limit system was last tested in 2004.<\/p>\n
NASA officials estimate it will cost between $4.1 million and $4.6 million to repair and restore the antenna to service. \u201cOur plan for that system is to combine any of the remediation after the mishap with an already planned upgrade cycle that will keep that system down into 2028,\u201d Heckler said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NASA pushed its Deep Space Network beyond its limits during the Artemis I mission nearly four years ago. The global array of deep space communications antennas couldn\u2019t keep up with the routine demands of 40 robotic science missions and the extraordinary surge required by NASA\u2019s Orion space capsule as it flew around the Moon. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}