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📡 DSN Now — live NASA Deep Space Network, made readable_

See which of NASA's giant antennas is talking to Voyager, JWST or a Mars rover right now: where each dish points, how fast the data flows, how far the signal travelled and how long it took. Live from Goldstone, Madrid and Canberra, every 5 seconds.
— Active Dishes
— Spacecraft
— Signals
Live Network Map — Who's Talking to Space Right Now
● active complex ○ idle complex — live spacecraft link (beam shows downlink direction) ┄ 120° coverage spacing
📏 Distance Ladder — from the Moon to interstellar space log scale · each step is 10× farther
● in contact now○ seen earlier on this visit or from published positions│ light time to that distance
Active Signals waiting for data…
Antenna Spacecraft Direction Data Rate Band · frequency Power Range
🛰️ Tracked Spacecraft

Guide — reading the live Deep Space Network in a minute

Everything above comes from NASA's DSN Now feed and refreshes every 5 seconds.
1Pick a complex

The tabs show all three sites or just Goldstone, Madrid or Canberra, each with its local time. One of them always faces any deep-space mission.

2Read the dishes

A lit dish is in contact. It shows the spacecraft, the ▲ uplink and ▼ downlink rate, and in the sky dial where in the sky it is pointing.

3Follow the map and the distance ladder

The map draws each live link. The ladder puts every tracked spacecraft on one scale, from the Moon to Voyager, with its one-way light time.

4Check the signals table

Per link: data rate, band and frequency, the strength of the received signal (dBm) or the transmitter power (kW), the distance and the round-trip light time.

5Share a spacecraft

The featured cards for Voyager, JWST, the Mars rovers and more keep their distance up to date. Share live link opens the page right at that card.

What the numbers mean

BANDSWhich radio band

The band follows from the frequency in the feed.

S-band
about 2 GHz: commands, emergencies, older missions
X-band
about 7–8.5 GHz: the deep-space workhorse
Ka-band
about 26–32 GHz: the fastest science downlinks
DISHESWhich antenna

DSS numbers start with 1 or 2 at Goldstone, 3 or 4 at Canberra and 5 or 6 at Madrid.

70 m
DSS-14, DSS-43, DSS-63: for the faintest signals
34 m BWG
beam-waveguide dishes, the bulk of the network
34 m HEF
older high-efficiency design, DSS-65
TIMINGLight time

Radio travels at the speed of light, 299,792 km per second.

OWLT
one-way light time: distance ÷ speed of light
RTLT
round trip: command out, answer back
Examples
Moon ≈ 1.3 s · Mars 3–22 min · Voyager 1 ≈ 1 day
STATUSIdle, cached or demo

A quiet dish is normal: it may be between passes or in maintenance.

● live
fresh data from NASA's feed
cached
the last good data, while reconnecting
demo
clearly labelled sample data when the feed cannot be reached
📖 How NASA Talks to Spacecraft

NASA's Deep Space Network, explained

DSN Now: NASA's live view, and what this page adds

DSN Now is NASA's own live display of the Deep Space Network at eyes.nasa.gov/apps/dsn-now. This page reads the same public data feed that NASA publishes for it and lays it out as plain text and numbers: which dish at Goldstone, Madrid or Canberra is pointed at which spacecraft, whether it is sending, receiving or both, the data rate, the distance and how long the signal took to arrive. It refreshes every few seconds, so a dish that switches from Voyager 1 to a Mars orbiter shows up almost as it happens.

Three antenna complexes, 120° apart

The Deep Space Network is built around three giant antenna complexes spaced roughly 120 degrees of longitude apart: Goldstone in California's Mojave Desert, Madrid in central Spain, and Canberra in Australia. As the Earth rotates, at least one complex always has line-of-sight to any spacecraft beyond Earth orbit. When one site loses a target over the horizon, another picks it up — a hand-off called AOS (acquisition of signal) and LOS (loss of signal).

Why Voyager's signal is so weak

Voyager 1's transmitter puts out roughly 22 watts — about the power of a refrigerator light bulb. By the time that signal reaches Earth, it has spread out across more than 24 billion kilometres of space. The power arriving at the antenna is on the order of 10⁻¹⁹ watts — a billionth of a billionth of a watt. To pull that whisper out of cosmic background noise, the DSN uses 70-metre dishes cooled with cryogenic amplifiers and decodes the signal at just ~160 bits per second — slower than a 1980s dial-up modem.

Uplink, downlink, and the round-trip light-time wall

Communication with deep-space probes is asymmetric. A 20 kW uplink transmitter on Earth pushes commands out to the spacecraft on S-band or X-band. The spacecraft answers with a much weaker downlink on a slightly different frequency, which the antenna receives through the same dish. There is no real-time control: a Mars rover command can take 3 to 22 minutes one-way; a Voyager 1 acknowledgement takes about two days round-trip. This is why every command uplinked to a deep-space mission is essentially fire-and-forget — operators send a script and wait.

S-band, X-band, Ka-band — picking the right frequency

Different missions use different radio bands. S-band (~2 GHz) is reliable for command and emergency telemetry. X-band (~8 GHz) is the deep-space workhorse — most science data flows here. Ka-band (~32 GHz) offers the highest data rates and is used by JWST, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and Psyche to push huge volumes of imagery and instrument data home, but it suffers more from rain and atmospheric absorption.

What the live dashboard above is showing

The panels at the top of this page pull directly from NASA's DSN Now feed. Every five seconds you see which dish is currently locked onto which spacecraft, what frequency is being used, the data rate, the uplink power level, and the round-trip light-time. When you watch DSS-14 in Goldstone or DSS-43 in Canberra come online with Voyager 1 or 2 in the target field, you are seeing one of humanity's longest-running phone calls happen in real time.

🏆 Deep Space Records & Trivia
25.8 B km Most distant human-made object Voyager 1, launched 1977. More than 170 astronomical units away and still climbing — one full light-day from Earth on Nov 18, 2026.
~160 bps Slowest deep-space data rate received The Voyager probes' downlink. Slower than a 1981 Hayes Smartmodem.
70 m Largest steerable dish in the network DSS-14 (Goldstone), DSS-43 (Canberra), DSS-63 (Madrid). Each weighs ~2,700 tonnes.
49 yrs Longest-running active spacecraft Voyager 2 launched August 20, 1977 — and is still phoning home.
~23h 55m One-way signal time to Voyager 1 A round-trip command-and-response takes about two days.
DSS-43 Only dish that can command Voyager 2 Canberra's 70 m antenna. When it went offline for an upgrade in 2020, Voyager 2 could not be commanded for about 11 months. In August 2023 DSS-43 also sent the high-power “interstellar shout” that re-pointed Voyager 2's antenna at Earth after a mis-sent command.
28 Mbps Fastest routine DSN radio downlink (Ka-band) JWST returns up to 28 Mbps from Sun-Earth L2, ~1.5 million km away.
10⁻¹⁹ W Signal power received from Voyager 1 A billionth of a billionth of a watt — about 20 billion times weaker than a typical Wi-Fi signal at your laptop.
1963 Year the DSN was formally established Created by NASA/JPL to consolidate Mariner-era tracking stations into one global network.
📚 DSN Glossary — Terms Used Above
DSN — Deep Space Network
NASA's global array of giant radio antennas used to communicate with interplanetary spacecraft. Three complexes in California, Spain, and Australia, operated by JPL.
AOS — Acquisition of Signal
The moment a spacecraft rises above the local horizon at a ground station and the antenna locks onto its signal. The opposite of LOS.
LOS — Loss of Signal
The moment a spacecraft sets below the horizon (or behind a planetary body) and contact is lost until the next pass at another complex.
Earth → spacecraft. The antenna transmits commands, ranging tones, and configuration data to the spacecraft. Shown as orange ▲ in the active-signals table above.
Spacecraft → Earth. The antenna receives telemetry, science data, and engineering housekeeping. Shown as green ▼ in the active-signals table above.
S-band (~2 GHz)
A radio band used for low-rate command, telemetry, and ranging — particularly for older missions and for emergency contact. Robust against weather but limited bandwidth.
X-band (~8 GHz)
The deep-space workhorse band. Most NASA missions carry both S-band and X-band; X-band carries the bulk of science telemetry because it offers more bandwidth without serious atmospheric loss.
Ka-band (~32 GHz)
The highest-rate band currently used in deep space. JWST, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Psyche and Europa Clipper use Ka for high-rate downlink. More vulnerable to rain fade and antenna pointing errors.
RTLT — Round-Trip Light Time
How long a radio signal takes to travel from Earth to the spacecraft and back. For Voyager 1 it is about 48 hours in late 2026. For a Mars rover it ranges from 6 to 44 minutes. RTLT is the hard ceiling on real-time control.
OWLT — One-Way Light Time
Half of RTLT — the time for a signal to travel one direction. Used to time-stamp commands and align telemetry to the moment they were generated on board.
BWG — Beam Waveguide
The 34-metre antenna design used for most modern DSN dishes (DSS-24, 25, 26, 34, 35, 36, 53, 54, 55, 56). The radio electronics sit in a temperature-controlled basement room and the signal is bounced up to the dish through mirrors, allowing easier maintenance.
HEF — High Efficiency
An older 34-metre antenna design (e.g., DSS-65 in Madrid) where electronics are mounted directly at the focus of the dish.
EIRP — Effective Isotropic Radiated Power
The "loudness" of an uplink signal expressed as if it were radiated equally in all directions. DSN 70 m dishes hit ~100 dBW EIRP — extreme by terrestrial radio standards.
Telemetry
Engineering data the spacecraft sends home: voltages, temperatures, attitude, instrument health, command receipt confirmations. Distinct from "science data," though both come down as bits.
Ranging
A back-and-forth tone exchange used to measure the precise distance to a spacecraft (and infer its velocity). Critical for navigation, especially on missions targeting outer-planet flybys.
ℹ️ Data Source & Accuracy

Live data feed: all signal, antenna and spacecraft information shown on this dashboard is fetched directly from NASA / JPL's public DSN Now feed at eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/data/dsn.xml. This is the same feed that powers NASA's own eyes.nasa.gov DSN Now visualisation.

Update cadence: the source feed refreshes roughly every 5 seconds and this page polls it on the same interval. Local times shown for each complex are computed in your browser from your device's clock.

Accuracy & caveats: the feed reflects what each antenna's controller reports — occasional gaps, "idle" periods, or apparently inactive dishes are normal during scheduling boundaries and maintenance. The distance and light-time values in the Featured Spacecraft cards above use the live downleg/RTLT values from the feed when available, falling back to recent published values otherwise. When the feed is silent, Voyager and New Horizons distances are extrapolated on-page from recent published positions (Voyager 1 anchored to NASA's one-light-day date of Nov 18, 2026) and average recession speeds, so they can differ from JPL Horizons by up to a few hundred thousand km because Earth's own orbital motion is ignored — for navigation-grade values consult ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.

Independent project: this dashboard is an unofficial, independent visualisation built by Jasper Bernaers. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by NASA or JPL. No data is collected from visitors and there are no ads or trackers beyond privacy-first SimpleAnalytics page-view counting.