Eight essential facts about NASA’s Deep Space Network
• As the World Turns: The DSN is Earth’s only global spacecraft communication network
The Deep Space Network has three facilities - at Goldstone, Calif.; near Madrid, Spain; and Canberra,
Australia, all with multiple parabolic dish antennas, including one dish each that is 230 feet (70 meters) across.
Located about 120 degrees apart around Earth, the placement of the complexes provides round-the-clock
coverage of the solar system. (A telescope needs a direct line of sight to “speak” with a spacecraft.)
• One Small Step: The DSN showed us the first moonwalk
“That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.” The DSN received and relayed to the
world the first TV images of astronaut Neil Armstrong setting foot on the surface of the moon in 1969.
• Solar System Ambassador: DSN relays first close-up views of other planets
The historic network enabled the world to see the first-ever image of Mars, obtained by NASA’s
Mariner 4 spacecraft in 1965. Mariner 10 returned images of Mercury’s surface in 1974. NASA’s
twin Voyager spacecraft were the first to fly by Jupi