Goldstone Deep Space Communications Tracking Station

 NASA, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, historic landmark, satellite/space tracking station, Earth station

Each of the three Deep Space Communications Complexes consists of four deep space stations equipped with ultrasensitive receiving systems and large parabolic dish antennas. At each complex there are two 34-meter (111-foot) diameter antennas, one 26-meter (85-foot) antenna, and one 70-meter (230-foot) antenna. A centralized Signal Processing Center remotely controls the 34- and 70-meter antennas, generates and transmits spacecraft commands and receives and processes the spacecraft telemetry.

The antennas form separate subnets according to size; each subnet has a different communications capability. The 70-meter antenna subnet, which is the most sensitive, supports deep space missions; the 26-meter subnet supports spacecraft in Earth orbit; and the two 34-meter subnets support both types of missions.

The 26-meter antenna stations were originally part of the Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network, which is operated by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, located in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Goddard network is designed to support the manned orbiting Shuttle flights and Earth-orbiting scientific and communications satellites. The 26-meter stations were consolidated into the Deep Space Network in 1985 when it assumed an important added tracking responsibility for spacecraft in high elliptical Earth orbits. This realignment was in anticipation of the activation of Goddard's new Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, which is not compatible with spacecraft in "high" Earth orbits that travel out beyond the range of the new relay satellite system. This new satellite system will eventually replace nearly all of Goddard's ground stations, leaving the Deep Space Network as NASA's only ground-station network.