A live visualization of NASA's Deep Space Network — the array of giant radio antennas that humanity uses to communicate with spacecraft across the solar system.
Three ground stations in California, Spain, and Australia take turns talking to every active mission, from rovers on Mars to Voyager at the edge of interstellar space.
What you see here is real. The connections, the data rates, the distances — all sourced from NASA's live DSN feed, updated every five seconds.
Gold — the station is transmitting commands to the spacecraft.
Blue — the station is receiving data back.
Green — two-way link, talking and listening simultaneously.
Gray — the dish is pointed but idle.
Click any spacecraft to send a pulse of light toward it. The pulse travels at proportional speed — a signal to the Moon arrives in about 1.3 seconds. A signal to Voyager takes over 23 hours. You can click multiple spacecraft to race them.
Hover over a station to see what each dish is doing. Status comes directly from NASA's feed:
Telemetry, Tracking, Command — actively communicating with a spacecraft.
Engineering Sustaining — dish is available and on standby.
Engineering Upgrades — dish is being upgraded, temporarily offline.
Antenna Maintenance — scheduled or unplanned maintenance.
Other — radar astronomy, calibration, or internal testing.
Spacecraft stay on screen for 24 hours after they were last tracked. As the Earth rotates and different stations pick up different targets, the sky fills with everything the DSN is talking to. Check back later and you'll see more.
Built by Chris Bateman. Data from NASA/JPL DSN Now.
Not all objects in the sky are spacecraft. Some are just rocks.