Citation
Abstract
The number of spacecraft that require support from NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) is expected to increase significantly within the next few years. Thus, NASA has been exploring ways to increase capacity using existing antennas. One solution is beam-sharing. While successfully employed for simultaneous downlink, beam-sharing for simultaneous uplink using the same frequency band has not been an option. An approach to achieving near-simultaneous uplink involves multiplexing the data streams intended for all of the participating in-beam spacecraft onto a single uplink frequency. Here we focus on examining the various near-Earth and interplanetary scenarios involving multiple spacecraft and inspect the number of spacecraft that may fall within the beamwidth of a 34-m-diameter DSN station. The scenarios we examine include planetary orbital spacecraft, the Sun–Earth Lagrange points at L1 (SEL-1) and L2 (SEL-2), the lunar vicinity, and Gateway. For this study, we consider cases involving S-band (2 GHz), X-band (7.1–8.4 GHz), K-band (22–27 GHz), and Ka-band (32–34 GHz).
Details
- Volume
- 42-238
- Published
- August 15, 2024
- Pages
- 1–26
- File Size
- 2.5 MB