The project has exceeded all of its technical goals after two years, setting up the foundations of high-speed communications for NASA’s future human missions to Mars. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology successfully showed that data encoded in lasers could be reliably transmitted, received, and decoded after traveling millions of miles from Earth at distances […]
New capabilities allow the rover to do science with less energy from its batteries. Thirteen years since Curiosity landed on Mars, engineers are finding ways to make the NASA rover even more productive. The six-wheeled robot has been given more autonomy and the ability to multitask — improvements designed to make the most of Curiosity’s […]
Canberra joined the global network in 1965 and operates four radio antennas. Now, preparations have begun on its fifth as NASA works to increase the network’s capacity. NASA’s Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia celebrated its 60th anniversary on March 19 while also breaking ground on a new radio antenna. The pair of achievements […]