On The Size Of The Mission Suite Enabled By NASA’s Deep Space Network

The Deep Space Network (DSN) is the primary means of commanding, tracking, and receiving data from all of NASA’s deep space missions, as well as a number of deep space missions operated by other international space agencies.

The current number of missions enabled by the DSN is approximately 40 missions, but there has been concern about the level of “over-subscription” of the DSN, namely that the number of missions currently using the DSN is larger than can be enabled reasonably.

This manuscript assesses the maximum number of missions that could be enabled, based on recent performance and with the constraint that the total number of hours used per week does not exceed the available number of DSN antenna-hours.

Three different models are considered, and the maximal number of missions that could be enabled ranges between approximately 40 missions and 70 missions, assuming that there continues to be approximately six Mars missions and that those Mars missions continue to make use of the DSN’s multiple spacecraft per antenna (MSPA) capability.

Crucially, the conclusion that an approximately 50% growth in the DSN mission suite rests on the assumption that the DSN antennas are “interchangeable,” but they are not, with some spacecraft able to use only certain antennas. Efforts to make the DSN antennas more “interchangeable,” primarily in their transmitter and receiver suites, would be an effective means of ensuring expanded capability.

Additional findings from this work are that, while additional use of the MSPA capability might appear to be a promising means for increasing the mission suite, there appear to be no locations in the Solar System, other than Mars, for which it would be effective.

The distribution of spacecraft in the sky changes over time, leading to an inevitable over-subscription of DSN antennas during a typical year. Both panels show the distribution of the various spacecraft in azimuth as seen from the Goldstone Complex during 2024, with each radial bar representing one spacecraft. (left) Week 1, an illustration of a week in which spacecraft are “clumped” in limited ranges of azimuth and there is likely to be oversubscription; (right) Week 5, an illustration of a week in which spacecraft are distributed more evenly in azimuth with considerably less over-subscription. — astro-ph.IM

T. Joseph W. Lazio (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology)

Comments: 11 pages; posted with full recognition of the likelihood that this analysis is “overtaken by events”
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR); Popular Physics (physics.pop-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2506.13949 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2506.13949v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.13949
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Journal reference: Paper #610, 18th International Conference on Space Operations, Montreal, Canada, 26–30 May 2025
Submission history
From: Joseph Lazio
[v1] Mon, 16 Jun 2025 19:41:54 UTC (1,540 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13949
Astrobiology,