Sixty Years in Canberra: NASA’s Deep Space Network
- NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) facility in Canberra, Australia is celebrating its 60th anniversary, marking six decades of supporting space exploration.
- The DSN has been instrumental in communicating with spacecraft, including Voyager 2, which can only receive commands and data via the Canberra complex due to its proximity.
- A new radio antenna, Deep Space Station 33, is currently under construction at the Canberra facility, set to go online in 2029 as part of NASA’s Aperture Enhancement Program.
- The new dish will be a multifrequency beam-waveguide antenna, replacing an existing 230-foot-wide antenna that was more than six times as sensitive.
- With the addition of the new antenna, the DSN will support current and future spacecraft, handling the increasing volume of data they provide, and helping to advance space exploration.
Deep Space Station 43 (DSS-43), a 230-foot-wide (70-meter-wide) radio antenna at NASA’s Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, is seen in this March 4, 2020, image. DSS-43 was more than six times as sensitive as the original antenna at the Canberra complex, so it could communicate with spacecraft at greater distances from Earth. In fact, Canberra is the only complex that can send commands to, and receive data from, Voyager 2 as it heads south almost 13 billion miles (21 billion kilometers) through interstellar space. More than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away, Voyager 1 sends its data down to the Madrid and Goldstone complexes, but it, too, can only receive commands via Canberra.
As the Canberra facility celebrated its 60th anniversary on March 19, 2025, work began on a new radio antenna. Canberra’s newest addition, Deep Space Station 33, will be a 112-foot-wide (34-meter-wide) multifrequency beam-waveguide antenna. Buried mostly below ground, a massive concrete pedestal will house cutting-edge electronics and receivers in a climate-controlled room and provide a sturdy base for the reflector dish, which will rotate during operations on a steel platform called an alidade.
When it goes online in 2029, the new Canberra dish will be the last of six parabolic dishes constructed under NASA’s Deep Space Network Aperture Enhancement Program, which is helping to support current and future spacecraft and the increased volume of data they provide. The network’s Madrid facility christened a new dish in 2022, and the Goldstone, California, facility is putting the finishing touches on a new antenna.
Image credit: NASA