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Loading contentHow we stay in touch with, and navigate, spacecraft across the Solar System — the giant antennas and tracking stations, the radio and laser signal bands, the light-time that makes deep space so hard, and the radiometric, optical, and autonomous navigation that keeps missions on course. Built on real NASA/JPL, ESA, and JAXA data that reuses the platform's networks and missions; nothing is fabricated.
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.
The US complex of NASA's Deep Space Network, in California's Mojave Desert. Its 70 m antenna (DSS-14, the 'Mars' dish) and a cluster of 34 m beam-waveguide antennas track spacecraft across the Solar System.
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.
Measuring a spacecraft's distance and velocity from its radio signal — range from the round-trip signal time, and line-of-sight velocity from the Doppler shift. Combined over time from the ground stations, these fix a spacecraft's trajectory across the Solar System.