NASA says Artemis II can fly without its big, broken deep space antenna
On the 18th day of the Artemis I mission, NASA unexpectedly lost contact with its moonship, with the silence lasting for over four hours.
The outage began when the Goldstone station near Barstow, Calif., abruptly went dark, severing a critical link in the agency's deep space network. Controllers missed thousands of minutes of data from the Orion spacecraft and 16 other missions.
The problem was rather mundane but troubling: failed aging hard drives, outdated software, and warning lights that never blinked on.
You May Also Like
Goldstone eventually came back online, but the 2022 episode exposed the fragility of the space communication infrastructure. Now, as the agency prepares to launch astronauts on Artemis II — the first crewed flight to the moon in a half-century — NASA says the system is ready to go, despite Goldstone's 230-foot-wide antenna remaining out of service for the past four months.
But as mission leaders gear up for a potential February launch, NASA insists the broken DSS-14 dish, sometimes called the Mars Antenna, shouldn't be a concern, according to a statement for Mashable.
"There are no impacts on Artemis II communications because DSS-14 wasn't part of the mission planning, even before its unplanned outage," said Ian O'Neill, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory spokesperson.
The agency's latest assurance may be true, but the memory of that 4.5-hour blackout four years ago makes the situation feel more precarious, especially with four people scheduled to fly in Orion this time.
The damaged Mars Antenna at the Goldstone Complex is the largest dish on site — as large as a Boeing 747 jet — capable of tracking spacecraft traveling tens of billions of miles from Earth. It broke on Sept. 16, 2025, when it over-rotated during operations, straining cables and pipes at its center. Damaged hoses from the fire suppression system caused flooding, though NASA says the water damage was quickly addressed.
After returning from a long federal government shutdown, NASA established a formal mishap investigation board to determine what caused the damage and plan repairs, officials said in November. Mashable was among the first outlets to report the accident.
More than two months later, there's still no update on the radio dish's return to service.
Founded in 1963, NASA’s Deep Space Network is the world’s largest and most powerful system for communicating with spacecraft. It commands and monitors more than 40 missions through three complexes in California, Spain, and Australia, working around the clock so at least one site can always reach spacecraft as Earth rotates.
Setbacks of this scale have happened before. In 2014, a welder accidentally dropped a handrail during maintenance, puncturing a hole in the DSS-14 dish. In 1992, an earthquake wrecked the antenna, requiring repairs.
Beyond the aging hardware, the network is also overburdened. Data flowing through it has risen sharply over the past 30 years, exceeding its original capacity by 40 percent. The NASA inspector general, who acts as the federal watchdog over the agency, has repeatedly pushed for upgrades. Under the Deep Space Network Aperture Enhancement Program, the agency is adding six dishes, including a new 112-foot-wide antenna in California expected to come online this year.
The Office of Inspector General has not examined the specific impacts of the offline Goldstone antenna on Artemis II or other missions, said Raleigh McElvery, a spokesperson. Still, it issued a 2024 audit on NASA’s Artemis II readiness, noting that the agency had begun corrective actions to guard against similar outages. Since the 2022 blackout, NASA signed new agreements with international partners, such as Japan’s JAXA, to provide backup coverage should another loss of contact occur.
Having that reinforcement is crucial, according to the report, because communication disruptions during the mission are "increasingly likely."
"In fact, since the Artemis I mission, two similar failures have occurred at Canberra and Goldstone, requiring the replacement of three additional hard drives," according to the audit. "Looking forward, it is critical that the Agency continues to focus on improving DSN's maintenance, operations, and reliability to better ensure the network does not encounter outages that could put the Artemis II crew and spacecraft at risk."
Topics NASA
Elisha Sauers writes about space for Mashable, taking deep dives into NASA's moon and Mars missions, chatting up astronauts and history-making discoverers, and jetting above the clouds. Through 17 years of reporting, she's covered a variety of topics, including health, business, and government, with a penchant for public records requests. She previously worked for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia, and The Capital in Annapolis, Maryland. Her work has earned numerous state awards, including the Virginia Press Association's top honor, Best in Show, and national recognition for narrative storytelling. For each year she has covered space, Sauers has won National Headliner Awards, including first place for her Sex in Space series. Send space tips and story ideas to [email protected] or text 443-684-2489. Follow her on X at @elishasauers.
