NASA uses the Deep Space Network to communicate with all spacecraft. It consists of 14 antennas located in California, Spain and Australia. Problems arose with them.

What happened?

In the summer, scientists warned that the launch of the Artemis 1 mission would completely undermine the Deep Space Network as operators would need to monitor the spacecraft. When NASA launched Orion on November 16, this was what happened: While the spacecraft was in flight and outside of low Earth orbit, It is in almost constant contact with the Earth, taking over the resources of the communication system. For this reason, the James Webb Space Telescope and other missions were put on the back burner.

Sending instructions to the observatory is not affected as it is done once a week. But the problem arises in the data that James Webb himself had to send to Earth. The fact is that the volume of its own memory is very limited, so the telescope He should be able to send the collected data home regularly, and he should do this before his computer is full.. Astronomers had to change the observatory’s program and temporarily focus on short observations that produced less data. Currently, scientists have to wait up to 80 hours to receive data.

As a result, the James Webb Space Telescope team is asking NASA to strengthen the Deep Space Network ahead of the next Artemis missions. The space agency has already done that last year and this year by adding two new antennas to the original 12.