Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center,

Episode 425, The Future of Deep Space Communications. I'm Gary Jordan, and I'll be your host today.

On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts, all to let you know

what's going on in the world of human spaceflight and more. How great was the Artemis II

mission? I'm still writing the wave of excitement

about the mission myself. The crew captured stunning images of the Earth and moon and shared what

life was like for four individuals sharing 330 cubic feet over 10 days. We got peaks inside the spacecraft

and connected with people around the globe through still photos,

live stream video, and interactive events between the crew and people of Earth, as well as the

International Space Station.

For all of these fantastic images to reach us and be shared throughout the mission, we were relying

on the current space communications infrastructure.

This includes assets that supported the Near Space Network and Deep Space Network, traditional radio communications infrastructure. This includes assets that supported the near-space network

and deep space network, traditional radio communications networks that are shared with other users.

These assets have been used for decades and help to support missions from low Earth orbit

to the farthest stretches of our solar system. During Artemis, we in public affairs are

responsible for distributing the live streams, the videos,

and still photos publicly, and we were among the dozens of disciplines hungry for data.

Engineers, scientists, and flight controllers were all wanting data as quickly as possible,

and rightfully so.

Data helps to resolve technical issues, provide context for scientific observation, and gives

insight for flight controllers to make real-time operational

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