Deep Space Network: How Perseverance Rover On Mars Connects With NASA On Earth

Last week, NASA created history by successfully landing the Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity helicopter on the Mars' surface.

The exhilarating seven-month-long journey finally came to an end, and Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter are getting ready to conduct their science experiments on Mars, helping us better understand our solar neighbour.

NASA

However, it only makes us wonder, how does NASA manage to keep track of the spacecraft¡¯s landing and its journey while being millions of kilometres away on Earth.

In fact, NASA does this with spacecrafts that are further away than Mars -- spacecrafts that are observing the behaviour of Jupiter or Saturn etc. How does NASA communicate so effortlessly with these vehicles so far in space?

NASA Deep Space Network

All this is possible through NASA¡¯s Deep Space Network. To the uninitiated, it is an international network of antennas that offers communication links between scientists and engineers on Earth with the spacecraft that¡¯s on its mission in space.

ALSO WATCH: Epic NASA Video Shows Perseverance Rover Landing On Mars In Amazing Detail

The Deep Space Network or DSN includes three deep-space communications satellites which are installed around 120 degrees apart across the globe -- Goldstone in California¡¯s Mojave Desert, one in Madrid, Spain and one in Canberra, Australia.

What¡¯s special about their placement is that it allows constant observation of any NASA spacecraft regardless of Earth¡¯s rotation. So no matter what side Earth is on, it will allow the spacecraft to connect. This was the case with the Perseverance rover mission landing on Mars as well.

Wikipedia

These antennas are massive, ranging from 34 metres to 70 metres. The massive size of the antenna allows for more amount of information to be sent and received with a stronger signal.

Managing multiple spacecrafts at once

There are several spacecraft that are currently on their mission. And with millions of kilometres of distance between them and Earth, resources are limited, and thus it can only focus on one spacecraft at a time.

For special missions -- like the NASA Perseverance rover landing on Mars -- a sophisticated scheduling system allows allotting time to focus the Deep Space Network on that particular spacecraft.

How Perseverance communicated with NASA while landing

For Mission on Mars, the Mars Orbiter becomes a sort of access point between spacecraft and rovers on Mars and Earth. So while Perseverance was approaching Mars for landing, antennas on the orbiter -- which is spinning around Mars from a previous mission -- tracked signals from the spacecraft to make sure there isn¡¯t a loss of communication.

While Perseverance rover was on its way to Mars, Deep Space Network would pick up signals from the spacecraft and inform navigators of its trajectory to Mars. The Deep Space Network constantly listens for the signals from Mars or outer space and as it receives one it updates the spacecraft's location in real-time.

Perseverance rover's communication with DSN

Just like Curiosity rover, Perseverance rover will have the ability to communicate directly with Earth through the NASA Deep Space Network. However, in case Mars¡¯ rotation puts the rover away from Earth¡¯s view, it would take a bit longer to share the data through the relay.

NASA

In this case, it sends the data to the Mars Orbiter. Since the Orbiter is not affected by Mars¡¯ rotation and Earth is always in its path, it can relay that data to Earth. This not only enables faster communication between Perseverance Rover and NASA's headquarters here on Earth but also requires less energy than it would take normally for the rover to communicate with NASA.