NASA Deep Space Network’s DSS-23 Antenna Now Online | Jet Propulsion Laboratory
This footage shows the latest antenna of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) to go online at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California.
Called Deep Space Station 23 (DSS-23), the antenna began communicating with spacecraft on Aug. 3, 2026. It is part of the Deep Space Network’s Aperture Enhancement Project, which began in 2009 to upgrade and expand the network by adding six new 34-meter multifrequency beam-waveguide antennas. These versatile DSN dishes can enhance many missions operating over different radio frequencies.
The DSN allows missions to track, send commands to, and receive scientific data from faraway spacecraft at its three complexes at Goldstone, in Canberra, Australia, and in Madrid, Spain. It is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech, in Southern California for the agency’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Program, located at NASA Headquarters within the Research and Technology Mission Directorate.
After completing a testing campaign from May through July to demonstrate its capabilities, the new DSS-23 began operations on Aug. 3, tracking NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Since then, it has been communicating with dozens of missions such as NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Psyche, Juno, Voyager 1, and other robotic spacecraft in deep space.
Construction of DSS-23 began in February 2020. After the 133-ton metal reflector framework was placed and bolted atop the antenna’s pedestal in December 2024, engineers installed the panels to the framework that reflect radio frequency signals transmitted to and received from spacecraft. Then came the careful process of calibrating the antenna so it can work in concert with the rest of the network.
It is the fifth antenna at Goldstone (joining three 34-meter antennas and one 70-meter, or 230-foot, antenna) and the fifth enhancement project antenna to join the network, which includes antennas at the DSN’s Goldstone, Madrid, and Canberra, Australia, complexes. Multifrequency beam waveguide antennas direct signals down to a stable, climate-controlled underground room, rather than housing heavy, sensitive electronic equipment on the moving antenna dish. In addition to offering versatility, this design allows easy access for maintenance and upgrades to the system.
“The biggest challenge wasn’t actually constructing the antenna. It was transforming a complex collection of mechanical, electrical, software, radio frequency, and infrastructure systems into a single, mission-ready asset,” said Germaine Aziz, manager of the Deep Space Network Aperture Enhancement Project at JPL. “Every subsystem must be integrated, calibrated, and verified to operate with extraordinary precision and reliability before it can support NASA’s deep space missions.”
The enhancement project will be complete when a sixth enhancement-project antenna, Deep Space Station 33, comes online at the Canberra facility in 2029, bringing the total number of 34-meter antennas across the network to 13. The 34-meter antennas can be arrayed (combined and operated together) to provide an equivalent communications backup for each facility’s single 70-meter antenna, which, after more than 50 years of near-continuous operation, are getting increasingly costly to maintain and repair.
Managed by Caltech for NASA, JPL manages the agency’s Deep Space Network with the oversight of NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Program within NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate. More than 100 NASA and non-NASA missions rely on the Deep Space Network and Near Space Network. They include missions that support astronauts aboard the International Space Station and future Artemis missions, monitoring Earth, exploring the Moon, and exploring the solar system and beyond.
https://www.nasa.gov/communicating-with-missions/dsn
Video Credit: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Duration: 3 minutes
Release Date: Sept. 3, 2026
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