Can You Hear Me Now?

Miss ion D es ig n Figure 1. Robotic spacecraft cannot operate without reliable computers and communication protocols with ground control on Earth. Careful planning of these aspects is essential for all spacecraft mission designers, from planning the basic structure of the spacecraft (schematic of the MESSENGER spacecraft, top left), to constructing computer systems capable of operating in the harsh space environment (command and data subsystem from the Cassini spacecraft, top right), scheduling communication times with the spacecraft through NASA’s Deep Space Network (a Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, CA; bottom left), and having a Mission Operations Center monitor the behavior of and communicate with the spacecraft (Mission Operations Center of the Gravity Probe B spacecraft at Stanford University; bottom right.) (Picture credits: NASA/ JHU-APL/CIW: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/spacecraft/overview.html; Le s s o n ov e rv i e w Miss ion to M er c u r y MSEN G E R