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Loading contentThe end-to-end function every mission depends on: downlinking telemetry (spacecraft health and science), measuring the signal for tracking and navigation, and uplinking commands. The deep-space and near-Earth networks exist to provide TT&C.
communication_system:telemetry-tracking-commandDataset membership
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Planned API: GET /api/v0/entities/communication_system:telemetry-tracking-command
Scientific entity. See the evidence framework and authority dashboard.
How Telemetry, Tracking & Command (TT&C) connects across Asteria Star — scientific, cultural, and astrological links are kept separate.
A lower-frequency microwave band long used for spacecraft command and low-rate telemetry, and for near-Earth links. Robust and less affected by weather than higher bands, but limited in data rate.
The workhorse band of deep-space communication and radiometric navigation. Most interplanetary missions send their science data and are tracked on X-band, which balances data rate against antenna size and weather losses.
NASA's international array of giant radio antennas — at Goldstone (California), Madrid, and Canberra — that communicates with interplanetary spacecraft and distant satellites, spaced around the globe for continuous coverage.
NASA's technology demonstration of laser communication from deep space, flying as a rider on the Psyche spacecraft. It transmitted data over tens of millions of kilometres at rates far beyond radio, proving optical links for future missions.
A NASA optical-communication relay in geostationary orbit that demonstrates two-way laser links between ground stations and spacecraft, a stepping stone toward operational optical relays in the Near Space Network.
A fleet of geostationary relay satellites that give near-Earth spacecraft — including the ISS and Hubble — near-continuous contact with the ground, instead of only during the few minutes of a ground-station pass. TDRS is the space-based half of NASA's Near Space Network.
Facts on this topic will be cited from these primary and reference sources.
Mission data, planetary science, space telescopes, and public-domain imagery.
Most NASA-produced imagery is in the public domain; individual items are checked for usage terms before publication.
Orbital data, ephemerides, and small-body parameters for planets, asteroids, and comets.