A Day in the Life of a Deep Space Network Operator

Meet Beth Sheppard: one of our Deep Space Network Mission Operations Engineers.

Beth spends her time communicating with spacecraft as far away as the Moon and Mars, from right here at Goonhilly. Want to know what that looks like day to day?

Join us for the next episode of 60 Minutes Inside Goonhilly....

[goonhillyearthstationltd]

Does this look like your dream job?? Head to www.goonhilly.org/careers to find out more about our job openings and to apply! 📡

[philgreen]

What a fascinating job you have, I am insanely jealous! Is there any possibility that members of the public can have a look around the facility? I would dearly like to visit if this is possible.

[stevemumbling]

Would have been good to hear the output power of the HPAs and the corresponding ERP from the dish on the different bands.

[Drew_TheRoadLessTraveled]

Awesome video of the control rooms.
I recently took a trip to Womera-rocket range South Australia. Looking at the old tech it is a wonder they could track anything. I use TinyGS to track over-head orbits in South Australia.

[AECRADIO]

X-BAND: 10GHZ.
S-BAND: 2.4 GHZ
Bands are approximate..not locked on that center frequency, they go above and below each.

[philliberatore]

The term " customers " referring to the end users kind of surprise me. Of course it makes perfect sense, I just never thought of it that way.
A very cool video. Thanks!

[skywatcherca]

What frequencies (what bands) are you able to receive? Thanks, very interesting.

[Hiram]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

[patchvonbraun]

Working on restoration of a 12.8m dish mostly for radio astronomy but also for lunar space missions in the future.

[VKCSJ]

Thank you...very interesting, would've been nice to hear more tecky stuff, but still, didn't know about Goonhilly until now...Cheers...;)

[KeritechElectronics]

Lots of nice tech there - reminds me CuriousMarc's trip to an Apollo era satellite dish.

[DesertVox]

I didn't know that there are 'customers' other than government agencies like NASA that would send spacecraft into deep space. Could you elaborate more on the type of customers you have, and what type of spacecraft and missions that they have?

[MoisesCaster]

Do these antennas communicate with the voyager probes too?

[stocksj]

What type of OS are you running your workstations on? Windows or Linux? Also do you use a custom monitoring/tracking Software or a commercial satellite tracking program? Thx

[alexlandherr]

The green clock shows UTC, why then use the GMT time zone on the ground track map?

[harryturnbull]

Where is Goonhilly? Is is it near Wessex?

[tedydjajawinata]

I would be very excited to work at such facility. Btw, as high tech as the facility is, it's amazing to see her using traditional paper to do the checklist. I would imagine they'd use a tablet 😁

[skywatcherca]

Forgot to ask - how large is the dish? Thank you.

[andresoqueso]

Very interesting! I have some questions related to scheduling: Each antenna is obviously only pointing in one direction at a time. What if a spacecraft sends a signal at a time when no dish is pointing at it? Also, how often do you move each antenna? How long does it take to download or upload each communication to a spacecraft? Thanks!

[alzeNL]

whats with the bloody irritiating music, its such an excellent opputnity to hear from the people that work there, why ruin it with music - ok some intro/exit music, but constant crappy music, its very annoying.