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So many spacecraft will be exploring Mars and the Solar System in three years
that NASA is worried they’ll get “busy” signals when they try to phone home.
Demand for tracking probes, collecting data from them and relaying control
signals, threatens to overwhelm NASA’s Deep Space Network, which tracks most
missions beyond Earth orbit from sites in California, Spain and Australia. Rich
Miller, mission officer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, says that the system will
be “200 to 300 per cent oversubscribed” during some critical periods. JPL is now
attempting to work out if upgraded antennas, better tracking techniques or…