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CommunicationsHow does NASA communicate with spacecraft? |
In order to have many missions going at once (which is NASA's goal in the next millennium) each spacecraft must be less dependent on help from ground control. The more autonomous a spacecraft is, the less time ground crews spend maintaining it. This means NASA can run more missions without increasing the current number of ground controllers and amount of DSN bandwidth available.
The smaller the bandwidth sent out from a single craft, the less "space" it takes up in the field of available transmissions. This means more transmissions can be received and processed by DSN.
How is data put on radio waves (What is modulation)?
What is the New Millennium Program?
