WASHINGTON For worldwide webaholics a glitch-free, fast and powerful computer along with unlimited speed and access to the Internet is a dream come true. You can reach anything and anyone with the right amount of bandwidth and the correct software. Fast communication has never been easier.
In space, however, no one can hear you Instant Messaging. For the computer console jockeys that monitor humanitys ever-growing fleet of deep space satellites and spacecraft, they want bigger, faster and more powerful ways to communicate.
For mission managers, nothing less than a planetary prefix number to easily dial up anywhere in the Solar System using a worldwide complex of satellite dishes will do: It would be the ultimate DSL, used for Deep Space Listening.
Thats the challenge NASA and other space agencies have undertaken, sketching out for the first time an international Deep Space Network (DSN) of spacecraft tracking stations.
Edward Weiler, head of NASAs Office of Space Science, said that the escalating number of econo-class interplanetary probes on the fly is a double-edged sword.
"The good news about faster, better, cheaper is that were launching a lot more solar system missions. The bad news is that were launching a lot more solar system missions," Weiler said in March at a pre-launch briefing for the Mars Odyssey craft. "We havent kept up on the ground, in a sense."
Growing pains
In coming years, as more and more craft circle and land on Mars, the red planet will be a focus for radio frequency frenzy. But that is only part of the static.
Spacecraft like Cassini at Saturn; comet-inspecting vehicles such as Stardust and Contour; the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF); the Messenger mission to Mercury, along with a growing cadre of international probes all these add up to a storm surge of data bytes ebbing and flowing between Earth and space.
| Interplanetary Traffic Jam from SpaceTV |
Now on SpaceTV: Date/Time aired: 2001-June-08-12am. NASA readies Deep Space Network for plethora of probes. [ACTIVATE] |
At present NASAs DSN consists of three deep-space communications facilities placed approximately 120 degrees apart around the globe: one at Goldstone, in Californias Mojave Desert; a station outside Madrid, Spain; and the last near Canberra, Australia.
The network managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. provides a two-way communications link that guides and controls planetary explorers. Weve all been on the receiving end of the DSN, at least anybody thats ever eyed many a photo from Mars, Jupiter, asteroid Eros, or scads of other shots from distant worlds.
The DSN is deemed the largest and most sensitive scientific telecommunications system on the planet. It needs to be given the upsurge in outbound probes departing Earth.
The issue is made more complicated by the output power of high-tech probes themselves. The chat rate of data-spewing spacecraft is climbing, Weiler said.
"The DSN was quite fine when you launched a Galileo spacecraft every 10 years," Weiler told SPACE.com. In addition, as deep-looking astronomical instruments are positioned at the L2 point far from Earth, these too will demand DSN time.
These issues and others, Weiler said, have prompted the taking of a global inventory of what antennas exist and how they might be utilized. There is recognition as well, that beefing up dishes is easier to do than building brand new antennas from scratch, he said.
The time is now to look to further internationalize the DSN, Weiler said.
Next page: Reaching out to the world.
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