“Once that is in place, as we move forward with new mission commitments, we will just be more focused, I think, and more process-oriented in being able to commit to new missions or not,” Heckler said.

Key antenna offline

One constraint on the DSN is an accident last year that knocked one of the network’s three 70-meter (230-foot) antennas offline at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California. This antenna, along with similar ones in Spain and Australia, is used to communicate with some of NASA’s most distant missions.

The 70-meter dish was tracking NASA’s Juno spacecraft at Jupiter last September when it “over-rotated” and damaged cables and water lines in the facility’s fire suppression system. An estimated 200,000 gallons of water flooded the base of the antenna. The water contained glycol, causing it to be classified as an environmental hazard, officials wrote in a report after investigating the accident. The resulting flooding rendered the antenna inoperable.

Investigators cited several technical and process causes. After troubleshooting a problem with the antenna’s emergency stops, technicians at Goldstone “overrode and bypassed multiple safeguards that normally would have prevented over-rotation,” officials wrote in the report.

“The investigation revealed inadequate training, insufficient written procedures, a reliance on undocumented behaviors and tacit knowledge, and deficiencies in the antenna’s control logic,” officials wrote. “In addition to the root causes listed above, the hydraulic limit system—the final fail safe against over-rotation—was discovered to have been severely damaged to the point of inoperability in an unknown and undocumented prior incident.”

Work logs indicated the hydraulic limit system was last tested in 2004.

NASA officials estimate it will cost between $4.1 million and $4.6 million to repair and restore the antenna to service. “Our plan for that system is to combine any of the remediation after the mishap with an already planned upgrade cycle that will keep that system down into 2028,” Heckler said.