The largest antennas
in NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN).
Gene
Burke worked in aerospace at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL)/California Institute of Technology for almost 50 years before
retiring this year. Besides JPL, he has worked in several NASA
locations, including the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex
outside of Barstow, California, and the Spacecraft Compatibility
Station at Cape Canaveral, Florida. As a Program Manager he worked with
many flight projects, and the Deep Space Network which tracks and
returns the data from these spacecrafts.
Gene holds a BSEE
and an MS in Program Management from West Coast University, Los
Angeles, California.
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The
NASA Deep Space Network - or DSN - is an international network of
antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and
radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system
and the universe. The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting
missions.
The DSN
currently consists of three deep-space communications facilities placed
approximately 120 degrees apart around the world: at Goldstone, in
California's Mojave Desert; near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra,
Australia. This strategic placement permits constant observation of
spacecraft as the Earth rotates, and helps to make the DSN the largest
and most sensitive scientific telecommunications system in the world.
To learn
more about NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN), go to JPL's website.
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The Deep Space
Network radio telescope dish, shown for scale in the Rose Bowl.
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34m Beam Waveguide
(BWG) antennas clustered at Goldstone.
Each has five precision
radio frequency mirrors that reflect radio signals along a
beam-waveguide tube from the vertex of the antenna to the below-ground
pedestal equipment room.
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