Space Communications & Navigation Program

Deep Space Network
Space Communications & Navigation Program
Space Communications Technology
Space Operations Mission Directorate
Space Technology Mission Directorate
Technology Demonstration
Technology Demonstration Missions Program
Capable of receiving both radio frequency and optical signals, the DSN’s hybrid antenna has tracked and decoded the downlink laser from DSOC, aboard NASA’s Psyche mission. An experimental antenna has received both radio frequency and near-infrared laser signals from NASA’s Psyche spacecraft as it travels through deep space.
Posted February 8, 2024
Space Communications Technology
Goddard Space Flight Center
Space Communications & Navigation Program
In 2023, NASA-developed search and rescue technologies aided first responders in locating and saving 350 lives in the United States. Now, NASA is incorporating that same technology in astronaut missions. NASA provides technical expertise to the international satellite-aided search and rescue effort known as Cospas-Sarsat.
Posted January 30, 2024
Space Communications & Navigation Program
Communicating and Navigating with Missions
General
Overview As NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) constellation approaches retirement, partnerships with commercial industry will play a critical role in the development of future space communications and navigation architecture.
Posted January 18, 2024
Glenn Research Center
Artemis 2
Communicating and Navigating with Missions
Doing Business with NASA
Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle
Small Business Innovation Research / Small Business
Space Communications & Navigation Program
Space Communications Technology
NASA is working with private industry partners and small businesses under Artemis to produce scalable, affordable, and advanced laser communications systems that could enable greater exploration and discovery beyond Earth for the benefit of all.
Posted January 10, 2024
Deep Space Network
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA History
Space Communications & Navigation Program
Editor’s Note: Text regarding the name of JPL’s first ground stations was updated on Dec. 27, 2023. The agency’s DSN provides critical communications and navigation services to dozens of space missions, and it’s being modernized to support dozens more. NASA’s Deep Space Network marks its 60th year on Dec. 24.
Posted December 22, 2023
Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC)
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Psyche Mission
Space Communications & Navigation Program
Space Operations Mission Directorate
Space Technology Mission Directorate
Tech Demo Missions
The video, featuring a cat named Taters, was sent back from nearly 19 million miles away by NASA’s laser communications demonstration, marking a historic milestone. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications experiment beamed an ultra-high definition streaming video on Dec.
Posted December 18, 2023
Laser Communications Relay
General
Goddard Space Flight Center
Space Communications & Navigation Program
Technology Demonstration
A NASA technology experiment on the International Space Station completed its first laser link with an in-orbit laser relay system on Dec. 5, 2023. Together, they complete NASA’s first two-way, end-to-end laser relay system.
Posted December 13, 2023
ISS Research
General
International Space Station (ISS)
Kjell N. Lindgren
Space Communications & Navigation Program
Space Communications Technology
STEM Engagement at NASA
In May 2018, a student at Mill Springs Academy in Alpharetta, Georgia, Andrew Maichle, talked to NASA astronaut Scott Tingle on the International Space Station via amateur or ham radio. The experience profoundly affected Maichle, who went on to study electrical engineering at Clemson University in South Carolina. “It was so cool to see in […]
Posted November 29, 2023
Psyche Mission
Space Communications & Navigation Program
Space Operations Mission Directorate
Space Technology Mission Directorate
Tech Demo Missions
DSOC, an experiment that could transform how spacecraft communicate, has achieved ‘first light,’ sending data via laser to and from far beyond the Moon for the first time.
Posted November 17, 2023
Artemis 1
Artemis
Communicating and Navigating with Missions
General
Goddard Space Flight Center
Johnson Space Center
Space Communications & Navigation Program
Space Communications Technology
In the year since NASA’s historic Artemis I mission successfully launched, the agency has been analyzing data from its approximately 25-day journey around the Moon and back to Earth, including data submitted from volunteers around the world as they tracked the uncrewed Orion spacecraft. The flight test, which launched on Nov. 16, 2022, atop the […]
Posted November 15, 2023
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