Staff at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California watch the agency’s Artemis II mission unfold soon after launch on April 1, 2026, at the Space Flight Operations Facility, which operates the Deep Space Network (DSN).
The DSN comprises of three complexes in Goldstone, California; Madrid, Spain; and Canberra, Australia. Each complex has several radio frequency antennas that communicate with dozens of spacecraft exploring the solar system in addition to the crewed Artemis II mission.
The DSN is managed by JPL for the agency’s Space Communications and Navigation program, which is located at NASA Headquarters within the Space Operations Mission Directorate. The DSN allows missions to track, send commands to, and receive scientific data from faraway spacecraft. JPL is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, for NASA.
