Artemis 1 moon mission squeezing communications with James Webb Space Telescope - Space.com

Two large NASA missions that person launched successful the past twelvemonth are revealing a communications weakness successful space.

NASA communicates with each of its distant spacecraft — from the Orion capsule to the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb oregon JWST) to Voyager 1 — done the Deep Space Network, a postulation of 14 antennas located astatine 3 sites successful California, Spain and Australia. But the web is busy, and ensuring that each ngo beyond Earth orbit has the communications clip it needs tin beryllium tricky, an contented that the Artemis 1 ngo has exacerbated.

"We were told implicit the summertime that erstwhile the Artemis abstraction ngo launched, the Deep Space Network was going to beryllium fundamentally afloat taken by Artemis due to the fact that they needed to support way of the spaceship," Mercedes López-Morales, an astrophysicist astatine the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the seat of the JWST Users Committee, told a gathering of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences' Board connected Physics and Astronomy connected Wednesday (Nov. 30). 

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The clip came connected Nov. 16, erstwhile NASA launched Artemis 1. A trial formation to footwear disconnected the agency's instrumentality to the moon, the 25-day ngo sent an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and is scheduled to splash down Earth connected Dec. 11.

While Orion is successful formation and beyond debased Earth orbit, it's successful near-constant interaction with the Deep Space Network — a large drain that has enactment the James Webb Space Telescope and different missions successful the backseat. NASA has known Artemis would strain the Deep Space Network; the bureau arranged upgrades to immoderate antennas and added 2 caller ones successful January 2021 and March 2022 successful preparation.

But communications clip is inactive scarce. "It could beryllium up to 80 hours — that's astir 3 and a fractional days — of nary interaction with JWST astatine all," López-Morales said she was told earlier Artemis 1's launch.

JWST scientists usually nonstop commands to the $10 cardinal observatory astir erstwhile a week, she told the board, truthful infrequent communications doesn't impact the observatory getting its instructions. But for astronomers to really bask Webb's power, the scope needs to beryllium capable to beam location its information — and bash truthful earlier its machine fills up.

"The large contented is that you cannot download information for that long," López-Morales said.

For Artemis 1, she said, the Space Telescope Science Institute successful Maryland, which operates some JWST and the Hubble Space Telescope, rejiggered JWST's observing schedule. Scientists prioritized shorter observations, which make smaller batches of data, to trim the chances of the telescope's machine filling up earlier the Deep Space Network tin judge the adjacent batch of data.

But due to the fact that NASA plans further Artemis launches — and these with humans aboard — successful 2024 and beyond, scientists privation a antithetic solution to the communications logjam.

"We are desperately asking NASA to travel up with a program to someway person much entree to antennas," López-Morales said.

Email Meghan Bartels astatine mbartels@space.com oregon travel her connected Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and connected Facebook.