A new 34-meter-wide radio antenna has been added to the Deep Space Network at NASA’s Goldstone complex in California. Deep Space Station 23 (DSS-23) became the fifth antenna completed under the Aperture Enhancement Project, launched in 2009.
After tests conducted from May through July, DSS-23 went into operation on August 3 and began tracking the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The antenna supports communications with numerous space missions, including Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Psyche, Juno and Voyager 1. With antennas in Goldstone, Madrid and Canberra, the network serves more than 40 spacecraft.
Why it matters
The commissioning of DSS-23 adds another antenna to the Deep Space Network’s communications infrastructure for spacecraft, increasing the network’s options for tracking and supporting multiple missions simultaneously. The development concerns the teams handling data communications for various missions, from the Chandra X-ray Observatory to Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Psyche, Juno and Voyager 1. The network’s service to more than 40 spacecraft through stations in Goldstone, Madrid and Canberra shows that the new antenna has been added not for a single mission, but to a shared communications system. The open question is what operational role DSS-23 will assume in sharing tasks with the existing antennas and how this will affect communications traffic.
Background
NASA is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 6 news articles mentioning the name in the last 90 days, the latest dated August 26, 2026. This development will be added alongside those records in our archive; readers can follow previous articles carrying the same name through the archive to see the timeline as a whole.