Telecommunications technology development for the Deep Space Network

Abstract

The Deep Space Network (DSN) is sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Office of Space Operations, and provides, communications and navigation support for NASA's deep space missions, lunar and high Earth orbiters. It has continuously evolving facilities whose instruments are also used for planetary radar, radio science, and radio astronomy. Over the past 30 years, the communications and navigation performance has increased many orders of magnitude. The receiving sensitivity and radio metric data accuracy are near the present-day achievable limits and are upgraded as mission needs, technology developments, and resources direct. Despite the technological evolution that is continuously underway, operations are highly reliable and versatile for the various mission requirements. Advanced technologies are being aggressively developed to improve future DSN capabilities. These advanced technologies, will be implemented into the DSN and will provide greater freedom to trade-off communications and navigational capability against mass and power on a spacecraft. The major areas that are currently being developed include Ka-Band (32 GHz) technology, beam waveguide antennas, low noise amplifiers, coding, navigation techniques, high power transmitters, and optical technology. This paper discusses the technology that is currently being developed for the DSN and its expected dividends during the mid-1990s and later.