Management from NASA Headquarters, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Deep Area Community (DSN) stand in entrance of the not too long ago accomplished Deep Area Station 23 antenna on the Deep Area Community’s Goldstone complicated close to Barstow, California, on Aug. 25, 2026.
From left: Germaine Aziz (challenge supervisor, DSN Aperture Enhancement Challenge, JPL); Bradford Arnold (supervisor, Telecom Applications & Oversight, JPL); Keyur Patel (affiliate lab director for Flight Initiatives & Mission Success, JPL); Wanda Peters (deputy affiliate administrator, Analysis and Know-how Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters); Jimmy Kenyon (affiliate administrator, RTMD, NASA Headquarters); John McCullough (performing director, Area Communications and Navigation Program, NASA Headquarters); Gregory Heckler (deputy program supervisor for functionality improvement, SCaN, NASA Headquarters); William Marinelli (improvement supervisor, SCaN, NASA Headquarters), Michael Levesque (challenge supervisor, DSN, JPL); and Frank Kaufholod (challenge supervisor, NASA Glenn Analysis Heart).
They gathered on the not too long ago accomplished DSS-23 antenna for a ceremonial ribbon slicing on Aug. 25, 2026. It’s the most recent antenna to be added as a part of the DSN’s Aperture Enhancement Challenge, which started in 2009 to improve and increase the community by including six new 34-meter (114-foot) multifrequency beam-waveguide antennas. These versatile Deep Area Community dishes can improve many missions working over totally different radio frequencies.
The DSN permits missions to trace, ship instructions to, and obtain scientific knowledge from faraway spacecraft. It’s managed by JPL, a division of Caltech, in Southern California for SCaN, which is positioned at NASA Headquarters inside RTMD.
For extra details about the DSN, go to: