NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN): Goldstone's Antenna Tracks Spacecraft

Late night in the desert: Goldstone's 230-foot (70-meter) antenna tracks spacecraft day and night. 

This photograph was taken on Jan. 11, 2012.

The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, located in the Mojave Desert in California, is one of three complexes that comprise NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN).

The DSN provides radio communications for all of NASA's interplanetary spacecraft and is also utilized for radio astronomy and radar observations of the solar system and the universe. 

DSN, the world's largest and most powerful communications system for "talking to" spacecraft, will reach a milestone on Dec. 24: the 50th anniversary of its official creation.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Deep Space Network for NASA. 

More information about the Deep Space Network is online at: www.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn50.

More information about NASA's Space Communications and Navigation program is at: www.spacecomm.nasa.gov.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech