ESA’s Malargüe tracking station
EU–(ENEWSPF)–18 July 2013. Picking up ultra-weak signals from spacecraft exploring deep in our Solar System requires cooling a detector to within a few degrees of absolute zero. Thanks to ESA’s support, the technology is now available in Europe for the first time.
With future exploration missions like Gaia, BepiColombo and Juice set to deliver massive amounts of scientific data, ESA’s trio of deep-space tracking antennas needed an upgrade.
The 35 m-diameter dishes in Australia, Spain and Argentina use cryogenic cooling to communicate via X-band microwave frequencies, similar to those used by radar speed detectors wielded so effectively by traffic police.
This enables communications at immense distances out to about 750 million km – equivalent to the distance from the Sun to Jupiter.
