NASA Deep Space Network Now in Go

The NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) is a global system of large antennas and communication facilities used to track, send commands, and receive data from spacecraft exploring deep space. Operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the DSN supports missions to the Moon, Mars, outer planets, and beyond, including the Voyager, Perseverance, and James Webb Space Telescope.

You can read more about the DSN on the NASA Deep Space Network Now.

I really suggest you read the article and research on this topic. It’s fascinating!

That finding led me to the Go DSN Now project, a terminal-based application that visualizes real-time data from the DSN. The project is written in Go and uses the tview library for the terminal user interface (TUI).

The project is available on GitHub

Features

• Live monitoring with real-time, detailed data. Data updates are almost instantaneous.
• Display targets being tracked by the stations. You can visualize the current target, distance, and round-trip light time value.
• Display up and down signals for each station. You can observe the signal strength, frequency, data rate, and modulation type.
• Interactive. You can select a station, antenna, current target, and both types of signals.
• Informative. You can access detailed information about the station, antenna, target, and signals.

How to use

If you have Go installed, you can run the following command to install the project:

1go install github.com/RustyDaemon/go-dsn-now@latest

Then, you can run the project with a simple command: go-dsn-now

OR

You can clone the project and run it locally.