NASA’s Deep Space Network facility in California is marking the addition of a brand new 34-meter-wide (114-foot-wide) radio frequency antenna to the agency’s deep space communications and navigation system. The network uses giant dish antennas located at three global facilities to support more than 40 spacecraft exploring the solar system and interstellar space.

The new Deep Space Station 23 (DSS-23) is located at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, near Barstow, and is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

NASA leadership and personnel as well as dignitaries gathered at the complete DSS-23 antenna for a ceremonial ribbon cutting. It’s the latest to be added as part of the Deep Space Network’s Aperture Enhancement Project, which began in 2009 to upgrade and expand the network by adding six new 34-meter multifrequency beam-waveguide antennas. These versatile dishes can enhance many missions operating over different radio frequencies.

“By expanding the Deep Space Network, we are strengthening the communications foundation NASA needs for the bold missions ahead — from exploring more of the Moon than ever before to peering deeper into the solar system,” said James Kenyon, associate administrator of the Research and Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This new antenna will help us deliver on our national goals for space exploration and push beyond the limits of what once seemed impossible.”

After completing a testing campaign from May through July to demonstrate its capabilities, the new DSS-23 began operations on Aug. 3, tracking NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Since then, it has been communicating with dozens of missions such as NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Psyche, Juno, Voyager 1, and other robotic spacecraft in deep space.

“The addition of this next-generation antenna brings us closer to a completely modernized network that embraces advanced technology to ensure NASA’s leadership in deep space communications,” said Dave Gallagher, director of JPL. “After over 60 years of continuous operations supporting consequential missions, these upgrades prime the network for a new era of exploration. The teams that designed, planned, and built DSS-23 should be proud.”

Enhanced capabilities

Construction of DSS-23 began in February 2020. After the 133-ton metal reflector framework was placed and bolted atop the antenna’s pedestal in December 2024, engineers installed the panels to the framework that reflect radio frequency signals transmitted to and received from spacecraft. Then came the careful process of calibrating the antenna so it can work in concert with the rest of the network.

It is the fifth antenna at Goldstone (joining three 34-meter antennas and one 70-meter, or 230-foot, antenna) and the fifth enhancement project antenna to join the network, which includes antennas at the DSN’s Goldstone, Madrid, and Canberra, Australia, complexes. Multifrequency beam waveguide antennas direct signals down to a stable, climate-controlled underground room, rather than housing heavy, sensitive electronic equipment on the moving antenna dish. In addition to offering versatility, this design allows easy access for maintenance and upgrades to the system.

“The biggest challenge wasn’t actually constructing the antenna. It was transforming a complex collection of mechanical, electrical, software, radio frequency, and infrastructure systems into a single, mission-ready asset,” said Germaine Aziz, manager of the Deep Space Network Aperture Enhancement Project at JPL. “Every subsystem must be integrated, calibrated, and verified to operate with extraordinary precision and reliability before it can support NASA’s deep space missions.”

The enhancement project will be complete when a sixth enhancement-project antenna, Deep Space Station 33, comes online at the Canberra facility in 2029, bringing the total number of 34-meter antennas across the network to 13. The 34-meter antennas can be arrayed (combined and operated together) to provide an equivalent communications backup for each facility’s single 70-meter antenna, which, after more than 50 years of near-continuous operation, are getting increasingly costly to maintain and repair.

Managed by Caltech for NASA, JPL manages the agency’s Deep Space Network with the oversight of NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program within NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate. More than 100 NASA and non-NASA missions rely on the Deep Space Network and Near Space Network. They include missions that support astronauts aboard the International Space Station and future Artemis missions, monitoring Earth, exploring the Moon, and exploring the solar system and beyond. 

For more information about the Deep Space Network, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/communicating-with-missions/dsn

Source: www.nasa.gov

NASA named a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the first prize winner for Phase 2 of the agency’s LunaRecycle Challenge, which focused on developing solutions for reducing waste during missions to the Moon or deep space by recycling common materials, like fabrics, plastics, foam, and metals. 

The Composites for Extraterrestrial Recycling By Engineering the Reuse and Upcycling of Zotek (CERBERUZ) team, comprised of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students at MIT, received a total of $775,000 in awards.  

The technology grinds mixed trash into a fine powder, repurposing materials such as Zotek foam as reinforcement rather than treating it as contamination that needs to be sorted out. The powder becomes feed for use as injection-mold finished parts or 3D-printing filament. The MIT team won in both the competition’s prototype development track and in the track focused on developing virtual models, known as “digital twins,” of recycling systems. 

“The LunaRecycle Challenge finale is the culmination of two years of innovation spurred by this competition,” said Jennifer Edmunson, program manager for Centennial Challenges at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “It’s incredible to see these technologies go from concept to prototype and digital twin demonstrations in that time. Driving rapid and creative innovation is what NASA challenges are all about.” 

LunaRecycle is a $3 million, two-phase competition in partnership with The University of Alabama Lee J. Styslinger Jr. College of Engineering. Phase 2 of the competition required U.S. teams to submit a prototype, with an optional digital twin serving as a virtual model of it.

For Phase 2, 14 finalist teams from across the United States gathered at The University of Alabama’s Lee J. Styslinger Jr. College of Engineering, in Tuscaloosa, from Aug. 24 to Aug. 28 to demonstrate their technology prototypes. The digital twin models submitted by some teams were also presented alongside their respective prototypes.

The competitors’ backgrounds ranged from university students and faculty to entrepreneurs and space technology enthusiasts. Teams were encouraged to envision solutions that not only addressed recycling in deep space, but that also could have applications on Earth. 

Along with the first prize winner, nine teams received prizes: 

Prototype track winners: 

• Second place overall ($225,000): Terasynth from Orlando, Fla. with Lunar Re-Forge System 

• Most Innovative ($50,000): RECLAIM from Penn State University with the Resource Extraction and Conversion from Lunar Anthropogenic Inputs with Microwaves (RECLAIM) system 

• Highest Mass Efficiency ($50,000): Cislune from Rosemead, Calif. with the Carbon Recovery and Feedstock Transformation for Extraterrestrial Reuse (CRAFTER) system 

• Most Trash Types Recycled ($50,000): Team Lovegrove from Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. with LunaBrix 

Additional digital twin track winners: 

• Second place overall ($125,000): Moon Made from Boulder, Co. with Fiber Forge 

• Most Innovative ($25,000): RECLAIM from Penn State University with the RECLAIM system 

• Best Visualization ($25,000): Waste Parrot Technologies from New York, N.Y. 

People’s choice winner ($25,000): 

• Terasynth from Orlando, Fla. with Lunar Re-Forge System 

“This competition highlights how collaborations can lead to incredible solutions,” said Chris Frangione, who manages the LunaRecycle Challenge in support of NASA Centennial Challenges contracted through Amentum Space Exploration Division. “Between the solver teams, The University of Alabama, and NASA, this finale showcases what can be achieved when we bring together resources and great ideas towards a common goal.” 

The Phase 2 awards follow the success of the competition’s Phase 1, which received record-breaking interest from the global innovator community with more than 1,200 registrations – more than any competition in the 20-year history of NASA Centennial Challenges. For Phase 1, which concluded in 2025, participants from around the world could submit designs in either or both of the prototype or digital twin tracks. A panel of 50 judges evaluated nearly 200 Phase 1 submissions, selecting 17 teams representing five countries and nine U.S. states as winners.  Phase 2 entries were required to be unrelated to Phase 1. 

The LunaRecycle Challenge is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center by Centennial Challenges, part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program within NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate. NASA’s Centennial Challenges have a legacy of more than 20 years engaging the public to solve complex problems that benefit NASA’s broader initiatives. Past challenges have spurred advances in robotics, additive manufacturing, power and energy, textiles, chemistry, and biology. 

LunaRecycle is also supported by subject matter experts at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and NASA’s Langley Research Center, in Hampton, Virginia.  

To learn more about LunaRecycle, visit: 

www.nasa.gov/lunarecycle

Source: www.nasa.gov

Now on a three-month, million-mile journey to its final orbit, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon reveal the universe’s darkest secrets. The mission launched at 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Roman pairs a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to explore vast swaths of the sky and probe deeply into cosmic history. This flagship mission will help astronomers explore dark matter, dark energy, and worlds outside of our solar system, known as exoplanets. Its surveys will support a broad range of research extending far beyond the mission’s main science goals.

“Roman is exactly the kind of success story we want to see across NASA,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “Delivered ahead of schedule and on budget, this mission reflects more than a decade of dedication from the NASA workforce and our industry partners. Now, Roman will give us a new atlas of the universe, push the boundaries of discovery, and demonstrate what is possible when America’s space program pairs bold ambition with disciplined execution.”

The ground control team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, began receiving telemetry data from Roman seven minutes after launch. The Falcon Heavy rocket performed as expected, separating from the observatory 31 minutes into the flight. After separating from the center core, the rocket’s boosters safely returned to the launch site for refurbishment.

“Roman will be a discovery machine that will bring us closer than ever before to answering humanity’s most profound questions about our cosmic history,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With its large field of view and fast survey speeds, Roman will usher us into a new era of discovery and make the invisible visible, setting the foundation for humanity’s search for life beyond our solar system.”

During launch and early orbit, Roman uses the Near Space Network’s ground stations and relay satellites to exchange tracking, telemetry, and command data with ground controllers. About 70 minutes after launch, the Deep Space Network takes over communications and guides Roman toward the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, about one million miles from Earth. Roman connects to that network through the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia first. Approximately six hours later it will transfer to the Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex in Spain and then to the Goldstone Deep Space Communication Complex in California, ensuring continuous contact with Roman throughout its journey.

The Roman team also confirmed successful deployment of the observatory’s solar panels and lower instrument sun shade an hour and 23 minutes after launch. Within the upcoming days, Roman’s high-gain antenna and visor-like deployable aperture cover will deploy, ground controllers will initiate the first of two-mid-course corrections, and the Coronagraph Instrument will power on. This instrument will demonstrate the technology that future missions like NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory concept could use to image Earth-like planets in the search for life in the universe. Roman’s Coronagraph will take a giant step in that direction by snapping pictures of Jupiter-like planets.

A few weeks into Roman’s voyage, its primary instrument, the Wide Field Instrument, will activate. This 300-megapixel infrared camera has 18 4K detectors, each about the size of a saltine cracker. These detectors collect photons of light that will be decoded into crisp cosmic panoramas. Thanks to the observatory’s rigid design and stable optical performance, it will rapidly scan the sky without needing substantial time between separate observations. The Roman telescope is designed to survey the universe a thousand times faster than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Throughout the rest of Roman’s three-month commissioning period, scientists will run the instruments through a series of calibrations and tests. NASA anticipates releasing Roman’s first images by early 2027.

Roman will send back 1.4 terabytes of data every day, the highest data rate of any NASA astrophysics mission, so far. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and citizen scientists will help sift through it and flag significant findings, which astronomers can then study.

“We’ve never been able to view the universe with eyes like Roman’s before,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. “There’s no telling what more we’ll know and have seen by this time next year.”

Roman is the fourth primary mission NASA has launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket. Earlier this year, the agency’s Launch Services Program worked with SpaceX to accelerate the launch date to accommodate the space telescope’s early completion.

The telescope is managed at NASA Goddard with participation by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a team of scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc., L3Harris Technologies, and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging. Contributions to Roman also are made by ESA, JAXA, the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.

To learn more about the Roman mission, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/roman

-end-

George Alderman / Alise Fisher
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
[email protected] / [email protected]

Claire Andreoli
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
202-286-1940
[email protected]

Source: www.nasa.gov

Description

Five antennas soak in the summer sun at the Deep Space Network’s Goldstone complex near Barstow, California, in August 2026. The recently completed Deep Space Station 23, a 34-meter (114-foot) beam-waveguide antenna, can be seen to the right of the frame in the foreground. The other three 34-meter antennas are, from left, DSS-26, DSS-25, and DSS-24. At farthest right is a smaller 26-meter (85-foot) antenna, the retired “Apollo Antenna” that was built in 1967 as part of the Manned Space Flight Network and earned its nickname for providing tracking for the Apollo Program.

NASA leadership and personnel as well as dignitaries gathered at the complete DSS-23 antenna for a ceremonial ribbon-cutting on Aug. 25, 2026. It’s the latest antenna to be added as part of the Deep Space Network’s Aperture Enhancement Project, which began in 2009 to upgrade and expand the network by adding six new 34-meter multifrequency beam-waveguide antennas. These versatile Deep Space Network (DSN) dishes can enhance many missions operating over different radio frequencies. 

The DSN allows missions to track, send commands to, and receive scientific data from faraway spacecraft. It is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, a division of Caltech, for the agency’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Program, which is located at NASA Headquarters within the Research and Technology Mission Directorate.

For more information about the DSN, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/communicating-with-missions/dsn/

Source: science.nasa.gov

Description

Long shadows are cast by the recently completed Deep Space Station 23 at the Deep Space Network’s Goldstone complex near Barstow, California, in August 2026. A 34-meter (114-foot) multifrequency beam-waveguide antenna, DSS-23 will boost the DSN’s capacity and enhance NASA’s deep space communications capabilities for decades to come.

NASA leadership and personnel as well as dignitaries gathered at the complete DSS-23 antenna for a ceremonial ribbon cutting on Aug. 25, 2026. It’s the latest antenna to be added as part of the Deep Space Network’s Aperture Enhancement Project, which began in 2009 to upgrade and expand the network by adding six new 34-meter multifrequency beam-waveguide antennas. These versatile Deep Space Network dishes can enhance many missions operating over different radio frequencies. 

The DSN allows missions to track, send commands to, and receive scientific data from faraway spacecraft. It is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech, in Southern California for the agency’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Program, which is located at NASA Headquarters within the Research and Technology Mission Directorate.

For more information about the DSN, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/communicating-with-missions/dsn/

Source: science.nasa.gov

Description

Leadership from NASA Headquarters, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Deep Space Network (DSN) stand in front of the recently completed Deep Space Station 23 antenna at the Deep Space Network’s Goldstone complex near Barstow, California, on Aug. 25, 2026. 

From left: Germaine Aziz (project manager, DSN Aperture Enhancement Project, JPL); Bradford Arnold (manager, Telecom Programs & Oversight, JPL); Keyur Patel (associate lab director for Flight Projects & Mission Success, JPL); Wanda Peters (deputy associate administrator, Research and Technology Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters); Jimmy Kenyon (associate administrator, RTMD, NASA Headquarters); John McCullough (acting director, Space Communications and Navigation Program, NASA Headquarters); Gregory Heckler (deputy program manager for capability development, SCaN, NASA Headquarters); William Marinelli (development manager, SCaN, NASA Headquarters), Michael Levesque (project manager, DSN, JPL); and Frank Kaufholod (project manager, NASA Glenn Research Center).

They gathered at the recently completed DSS-23 antenna for a ceremonial ribbon cutting on Aug. 25, 2026. It’s the latest antenna to be added as part of the DSN’s Aperture Enhancement Project, which began in 2009 to upgrade and expand the network by adding six new 34-meter (114-foot) multifrequency beam-waveguide antennas. These versatile Deep Space Network dishes can enhance many missions operating over different radio frequencies. 

The DSN allows missions to track, send commands to, and receive scientific data from faraway spacecraft. It is managed by JPL, a division of Caltech, in Southern California for SCaN, which is located at NASA Headquarters within RTMD.

For more information about the DSN, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/communicating-with-missions/dsn/

Source: science.nasa.gov

Dive in and explore the Navy — from its traditions to leadership and structure, to the ships, submarines, aircraft and personnel that deliver a global reach. See how America projects power at sea.

Source: www.war.gov

The boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., has powered America’s air dominance for decades. See how specialists restore, preserve and reactivate aircraft, keeping warfighters in flight.

Source: www.war.gov

Year in Photos focuses in on the people and activities of the War Department around the world while highlighting the extraordinary work of military photographers who capture it all.

Source: www.war.gov

The Department of War is America’s oldest and largest government agency, tracing its roots back to pre-Revolutionary times.

Source: www.war.gov