Deep Space Network Coverage Simulator

Talking to a spacecraft billions of kilometers away means the antenna on the ground has to actually be pointed at the sky where the spacecraft is — and Earth's own rotation constantly moves any single antenna in and out of view. This simulator places the three real NASA Deep Space Network complexes — Goldstone in California, Madrid in Spain, and Canberra in Australia — on a rotating 3D Earth and tracks, in real time, the elevation angle of each one to a distant spacecraft at a chosen declination. Watch stations rise above the elevation mask, hold the lock, and hand off to the next station as they set, and see exactly why three antenna complexes spaced ~120° apart in longitude are what keeps missions like Voyager and Perseverance in near-continuous contact instead of going dark for hours at a time.