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NASA ramps Mars preparations with groundbreaking for new antenna

This artist's concept shows what Deep Space Station-23, a new antenna dish capable of supporting both radio wave and laser communications, will look like when completed at the Deep Space Network's Goldstone, California, complex. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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6 years ago

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Ever wonder how spacecraft spread throughout our solar system communicate with Earth? They do so through an international array of radio antenna known as the Deep Space Network. The network consists of 12 antennas at three separate locations: Goldstone, California; Madrid, Spain; and Canberra, Australia. NASA chose these locations because they’re each 120 degrees apart from each other, so satellites can always talk to Earth one of the stations.

“The Deep Space Network is Earth’s one phone line to our two Voyager spacecraft—both in interstellar space—all our Mars missions, and the New Horizons spacecraft that is now far past Pluto,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory Deputy Director Larry James said in a statement. “The more we explore, the more antennas we need to talk to all our missions.”

NASA is preparing for the future as more Mars missions come online and we start to send astronauts to the moon and beyond. So the space agency is adding to its current network. On Feb. 12, NASA broke ground on the new antenna, which will be added to the Goldstone site in California. 

The 112-foot-wide dish, called Deep Space Station-23 (or DSS23), will take about two and half years to build. And it’s not the only addition NASA is planning. Space is getting crowded, and with the push to return to the moon and eventual plan to send humans to Mars, NASA wants to make sure it has plenty of bandwidth to communicate. To that end, the space agency aims to build an additional five antennas.

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“Since the 1960s, when the world first watched live pictures of humans in space and on the Moon, to revealing imagery and scientific data from the surface of Mars and vast, distant galaxies, the Deep Space Network has connected humankind with our solar system and beyond,” said Badri Younes, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for Space Communications and Navigation, or SCaN, which oversees NASA’s networks. “This new antenna, the fifth of six currently planned, is another example of NASA’s determination to enable science and space exploration through the use of the latest technology.”

Deep Space Network On Feb. 11, 2020, NASA, JPL, military and local officials broke ground in Goldstone, California, for a new antenna in the agency’s Deep Space Network, which communicates with all its deep space missions.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This is the first addition to Goldstone since 2003, and the new dish is being built at the complex’s Apollo site — named because its DSS-16 antenna supported NASA’s human missions to the Moon. The new dish being built will be able to support more missions with advanced technology, like lasers, which are capable of transmitting vast amounts of data from far out in the solar system as well as from astronauts on the lunar and Martian surfaces.

“Lasers can increase your data rate from Mars by about 10 times what you get from radio,” said Suzanne Dodd, director of the Interplanetary Network, the organization that manages the DSN. “Our hope is that providing a platform for optical communications will encourage other space explorers to experiment with lasers on future missions.”

Similar antennas have recently been built at the Canberra site and two are currently under construction in Madrid. The Deep Space Network is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and even has its own website where viewers can see which DSN dishes are talking to which spacecraft at any given time.

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SpaceX reaches incredible Starlink milestone

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2 days ago

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October 26, 2025

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX has reached an incredible milestone with its Starlink program, officially surpassing 10,000 satellites launched into low Earth orbit since starting the program back in 2019.

Last Sunday, October 19, SpaceX launched its 131st and 132nd Falcon 9 missions of 2025, one from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the other from Vandenberg, California.

The 10,000th Starlink satellite was aboard the launch from California, which was Starlink 11-19, and held 28 v2 mini optimized satellites.

The achievement was marked by a satellite tracker developed by Jonathan McDowell.

The first Starlink launch was all the way back on May 23, 2019, as SpaceX launched its first 60 satellites from Cape Canaveral using a Falcon 9 rocket.

Of the over 10,000 satellites in orbit, the tracker says 8,608 are operational, as some are intentionally de-orbited after becoming faulty and destroyed in the atmosphere.

SpaceX has truly done some really incredible things during its development of the Starlink program, including launch coverage in a global setting, bringing along millions of active subscribers that use the service for personal and business use, locking up commercial partnerships, and more.

Starlink currently operates in around 150 countries, territories, and markets and is available at least somewhere on all seven continents.

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Additionally, Starlink has over 5 million subscribers worldwide, and 2.7 million have joined the program over the past year. It has revolutionized internet access on commercial aircraft as well, as several high-profile airlines like Qatar and United, among many others, have already installed Starlink on some of their planes to deliver more stable connectivity for passengers and crew.

SpaceX has the approval to launch 12,000 Starlink satellites from the FAA, but it plans to bring over 30,000 to its constellation, giving anyone the ability to have access to high-speed internet.

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SpaceX aces Starship’s 11th launch with success in every mission objective

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2 weeks ago

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October 14, 2025

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX aces its eleventh Starship test launch on Monday evening, marking the company’s second consecutive takeoff that crossed off each of the planned mission objectives.

It was also the final launch of the V2 Starship rocket. The twelfth test flight will feature the larger V3 Starship rocket, followed by V4, which will eventually make the first trip to Mars.

The launch was overwhelmingly successful. In its 12th test flight, SpaceX was able to achieve every major mission objective, including the second successful deployment of Starlink satellite simulators and the relight of a Raptor engine while in space. The latter achievement demonstrated “a critical capability for future deorbit burns,” the company said.

The ship officially launched at 6:23 p.m. local time in Starbase, Texas, with all 33 engines igniting and sending the Ship to space.

Stage separation occurred just over eight minutes later, and Super Heavy started its descent back to the Gulf of America, where it successfully splashed down. The first part of the launch was complete.

Starlink simulators were deployed about twenty-one minutes after launch, as the Pez dispenser sent the faux-satellites out to space without any issue:

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Perhaps the most anticipated part of the launch was with Starship’s banking maneuver and subsequent splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Prior to Starship 11’s launch and successful re-entry and splashdown, SpaceX had lost a few vehicles during this portion of the previous flights.

However, the company had made tremendous improvements and has now aced two consecutive launches. On Monday, its approach and splashdown were both overwhelmingly successful:

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The re-entry phase of this particular Starship launch aimed to gather data on the performance of the heatshield, SpaceX said. The heatshield was intentionally stressed to its limits to determine how much it could withstand without failing.

SpaceX will now turn its focus to the next vehicles, including V3, which is larger, more capable, and will help the company gather even more information about its launches into space:

CEO Elon Musk has said the third-generation Starship rocket will be built and tested by the end of the year.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk reveals when SpaceX will perform first-ever Starship catch

“Starship catch is probably flight 13 to 15, depending on how well V3 flights go,” Musk said.

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2 months ago

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August 28, 2025

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Credit: SpaceX

Elon Musk revealed when SpaceX would perform the first-ever catch attempt of Starship, its massive rocket that will one day take life to other planets.

On Tuesday, Starship aced its tenth test flight as SpaceX was able to complete each of its mission objectives, including a splashdown of the Super Heavy Booster in the Gulf, the deployment of eight Starlink simulators, and another splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean.

It was the first launch that featured a payload deployment:

SpaceX Starship Flight 10 was so successful, it’s breaking the anti-Musk narrative

SpaceX was transparent that it would not attempt to catch the Super Heavy Booster, something it has done on three previous occasions: Flight 5 on October 13, 2024, Flight 7 on January 16, and Flight 8 on March 6.

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This time, it was not attempting to do so. However, there are bigger plans for the future, and Musk detailed them in a recent post on X, where he discussed SpaceX’s plans to catch Starship, which would be a monumental accomplishment.

Musk said the most likely opportunities for SpaceX to catch Starship itself would be Flight 13, Flight 14, and Flight 15, but it depends on “how well the V3 flights go.”

The Starship launched with Flight 10 was a V2, which is the same size as the subsequent V3 rocket but has a smaller payload-to-orbit rating and is less powerful in terms of initial thrust and booster thrust. Musk said there is only one more V2 rocket left to launch.

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V3 will be the version flown through 2026, as V4, which will be the most capable Starship build SpaceX manufactures, is likely to be the first company ship to carry humans to space.

Musk said that SpaceX planned to “hopefully” attempt a catch of Starship in 2025. However, it appears that this will likely be pushed back to 2026 due to timing.

SpaceX will take Starship catch one step further very soon, Elon Musk confirms

SpaceX would need to launch the 11th and 12th test flights by the end of the year in order to get to Musk’s expected first catch attempt of Flight 13. It’s not unheard of, but the company will need to accelerate its launch rate as it has only had three test flights this year.

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