NASA Deep Space Network

node · earth · Three complexes: California (United States), Spain and Australia

The three-site radio network that is the only means of speaking to either Voyager, and the reason the mission is as much a ground achievement as a flight one. Its complexes sit roughly 120 degrees of longitude apart — Goldstone in the Mojave Desert, Robledo de Chavela near Madrid, and Tidbinbilla outside Canberra — so that a spacecraft anywhere in deep space is always in view of at least one of them as the Earth turns. Each complex has a 70-metre antenna and several 34-metre ones. The network is shared across every deep-space mission NASA flies and is chronically oversubscribed, so Voyager time is allocated rather than assumed. Managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.