Increasing demands on NASA's Deep Space Network are expected to be met more easily now that NASA has added an antenna. NASA says the dish, measuring 114 feet or 34 meters, is critical to boosting the capacity of its already hard-working deep-space communication system, particularly after the good work done during the Artemis 1 and Artemis 2 lunar missions.
Shortly after the antenna was put into service at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex on the 3rd of August it began tracking NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. It is the fifth antenna being installed under the network's Aperture Enhancement Project, which will add one more in 2029.
The Deep Space Network serves robotic as well as crewed missions in deep space and was first famous for carrying communications with Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong in 1969 as he walked on the surface of the moon.
