The Artemis 1 mission to the moon squeezes communications with JWST
Two major NASA missions launched last year reveal a communication weakness in space.
NASA communicates with all of its remote spacecraft – from Orion capsule to the The James Webb Space Telescope (Webb or JWST) at Voyager 1 — through the Deep Space Network, a collection of 14 antennas located in three locations in California, Spain and Australia. But the network is busy and ensures that every mission is outside of it Earth the orbit has the necessary time for communication can be inconvenient, which is a problem Artemis 1 mission gone bad.
“We were told over the summer that when the Artemis space mission launched, the Deep Space Network would basically be completely taken over by Artemis because they need to track the spacecraft,” Mercedes Lopez-Morales, an astrophysicist at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and chair of the JWST User Committee -a, he said at a meeting of the Committee on Physics and Astronomy of the US National Academy of Sciences on Wednesday (November 30).
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The time came on November 16, when NASA launched Artemis 1. A test flight to begin the agency’s return to the moon, the 25-day mission sent the uncrewed Orion capsule into lunar orbit and is scheduled to touch down on Earth on Dec. 11.
While Orion is in flight and out of low Earth orbit, it is in near-constant contact with the Deep Space Network—a major drain that has put the James Webb Space Telescope and other missions on the back seat. NASA knew that Artemis would strain the deep space network; The agency agreed to upgrade some antennas and added two new ones January 2021 and March 2022 in preparation.
But time for communication is still short. “It could be up to 80 hours — that’s about three and a half days — without contact with JWST,” Lopez-Morales said she was told before Artemis 1 launched.
JWST scientists typically send commands to the $10 billion observatory about once a week, she told the committee, so the infrequent communications don’t affect the observatory’s instructions. But for astronomers to really enjoy Webb’s power, the telescope must be able to transmit its data home—and before its computer runs out of charge.
“The big problem is that you can’t download data for so long,” López-Morales said.
For Artemis 1, she said, the Maryland Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates both JWST and Hubble Space Telescope, rejiggered JWST’s observing schedule. The scientists favored shorter observations, which produce smaller bursts of data, to reduce the chance of the telescope’s computer filling up before the Deep Space Network accepts the next burst of data.
But with NASA planning additional Artemis launches — with humans on board — in 2024 and beyond, scientists want a different solution to the communications jam.
“We’re desperately asking NASA to come up with a plan to somehow have more access to the antennas,” López-Morales said.
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and further Facebook.
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