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“READ YOU LOUD and CLEAR!” the Story of NASA's Spaceflight

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“READ YOU LOUD and CLEAR!” the Story of NASA's Spaceflight Regardless of how sophisticated it may be, no spacecraft is of any value unless it can be tracked ON THE accurately to determine where FRONT COVER it is and how it is performing. “On Location—Sketch At the height of the space race, 6,000 3,” pastel drawing by Bruce men and women operated NASA’s Spaceflight A. Aiken. This drawing, third in Tracking and Data Network at some two dozen a series of field studies, was done in locations across five continents. This network, the early morning with a closer look at known as the STDN, began its operation by track- the NASA White Sands Ground Terminal. ing Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite June 1986. (86-HC-236) that was launched into space by the former Soviet Union. Over the next 40 years, the network was ABOUT THE AUTHOR destined to play a crucial role on every near-Earth Sunny Tsiao conducts aerospace research for ITT space mission that NASA flew. Whether it was Corporation and has written for the Department of receiving the first television images from space, Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration and tracking Apollo astronauts to the Moon and back, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. or data acquiring for Earth science, the STDN was He began his career as a cooperative student at the that intricate network behind the scenes making Johnson Space Center, serving on the Flight Crew “ the missions possible. Some called it the “Invisible Training Team for STS-5 and 6. He holds a mas- READ Network,” a hallmark of which was that no NASA ter’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from mission has ever been compromised due to a net- Purdue University and is a member of the Tau Beta YOU work failure. Pi and Sigma Gamma Tau engineering honorary Read You Loud and Clear! is a historical societies. An accomplished amateur model builder LOUD account of the STDN, starting with its formation and violinist, Sunny Tsiao was born in Taiwan and in the late 1950s to what it is today in the first grew up in Denver. He lives in Monument, AND Colorado with his wife and their three children. decade of the twenty-first century. It traces the ” roots of the tracking network from its beginnings Read You Loud and Clear! is his first book. CLEAR! at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico ON THE BACK COVER to the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System A team from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center by Sunny Tsiao (TDRSS) space-based constellation of today. The (GSFC) visits the Intelsat communications relay story spans the early days of satellite tracking using station on Black Island, 30 miles from the McMurdo the Minitrack Network, through the expansion base in Antarctica in February 1999. Pictured from of the Satellite Tracking And Data Acquisition left to right are Ken Griffin, HTSI (Honeywell Network (STADAN) and the Manned Space Technical Services Inc.); Phil Liebrecht, NASA GSFC; Flight Network (MSFN), and finally, to the Space Bill Watson, NASA Headquarters; and Don and Ground Networks of today. Shinners, HTSI. Image courtesy of Steve Written from a nontechnical perspec- Currier/NASA Wallops Flight Facility. tive, the author has translated a highly techni- National Aeronautics and Space Administration cal subject into historical accounts told within NASA History Division Office of External Relations the framework of the U.S. space program. These Washington, DC accounts tell how international goodwill and for- eign cooperation were crucial to the operation of 2008 NASA the network and why the space agency chose to SP-2007-4232 build the STDN the way it did. More than any- thing else, the story of NASA’s STDN is about the “unsung heroes of the space program.” “READ YOU LOUD AND CLEAR!” “READ YOU LOUD AND CLEAR!” The Story of NASA’s Spacef light Tracking and by Sunny Tsiao Data Network The NASA History Series National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA History Division Office of External Relations Washington, DC 2008 NASA SP-2007-4232 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tsiao, Sunny, 1963- Read you loud and clear! : the story of NASA’S spaceflight tracking and data network / by Sunny Tsiao. p. cm. -- (NASA SP-2007-4232) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Space vehicles--United States--Tracking--History. 2. Ground support systems (Astronautics)--History. 3. United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration--History. 4. Project Apollo (U.S.)--History. I. Title. II. NASA SP-2007-4232. TL4026.T785 2007 629.47’8--dc22 2007007826 To my beloved Father and Mother, Tom and Ellen I SBN 978-0-16-080191-4 90000 9 780160 801914 <ehiWb[Xoj^[Ikf[h_dj[dZ[dje\:eYkc[dji"K$I$=el[hdc[djFh_dj_d]E\\_Y[ ?dj[hd[j0Xeeaijeh[$]fe$]elF^ed[0jebb\h[[.,,+'(#'.&&1:9Wh[W(&(+'(#'.&& <'Wn0(&(+'(#('&*CW_b0Ijef?:99"MWi^_d]jed":9(&*&(#&&& ISBN 978-0-16-080191-4 CONTENTS Preface................................................ix Foreword..............................................xvii Acknowledgments......................................xxvii Introduction: Invisible Network.............................xxix 1 The Early Years.........................................1 2 Evolution of a Network..................................29 3 The Mercury Space Flight Network........................65 4 Preparing for the Moon.................................105 5 The Apollo Years.....................................143 6 Era of Change.......................................199 7 Network in Space.....................................243 8 The New Landscape..................................303 9 A Legacy...........................................329 Endnotes.............................................343 Bibliography..........................................383 Appendix 1: Acronyms, Abbreviations, Glossary...............403 Appendix 2: Maps...................................... 415 Appendix 3: Radio Frequency Chart........................425 Appendix 4: Honeysuckle Station Log for Apollo 11............427 Index................................................455 NASA History Series....................................475 PREFACE Much of what has been written on the topic of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) tracking and data networks has been on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Deep Space Network, the DSN. This is perhaps understandable as the DSN has played and continues to play a central role in many of America’s most high-profile exploration missions. These have included the early Pioneer probes, the Mariner missions of the 1960s and 1970s, Viking and Voyager, and most recently, Galileo, Cassini- Huygens, and the new generation of Mars explorers that will prepare the way for eventual human voyages to the Red Planet. The intent of this volume is to present a history of NASA’s “other” network, the one established and run by the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network, or STDN, was—in its various incarnations throughout the years—the network that tracked the first artificial satellites around Earth. It tracked Apollo astronauts to the Moon and back. Today, a network based in space called the Space Network, along with a much reduced Ground Network, work together to support the United States and international partners in all near-Earth space communications and space- flight activities. The history of the STDN is not unlike a microcosm of the history of NASA itself. It spans 50 years. It has seen its share of triumphs and tragedies, and it is playing a major role in setting the pace for space exploration in the twenty-first century. When considering sources for this history, the author searched for scholarly works that have been published on the subject of NASA’s STDN. x “Read You Loud and Clear!” There has been some coordinated effort to document NASA’s human space- flight and near-Earth communications networks throughout the years. Starting in the late 1960s, the GSFC saw the need to begin documenting this history. From that start, most of the literature on the subject has been independently commissioned reports sponsored by the Center itself. The seminal work was by William R. Corliss in 1969 called History of the Goddard Networks. Corliss updated it five years later, expanding the sub- ject to the end of the Apollo program. These initial works were relatively general, based primarily on secondary research—assimilation of information put out by the GSFC in the form of information pamphlets, brochures and public affairs news releases. NASA historian Alfred Rosenthal drafted, in 1983, an unpub- lished work titled Vital Links: The First 25 Years of NASA’s Space Tracking, Communications and Data Acquisition 1958–1983. Vital Links was a new work on the subject, taking the timeline up through the early part of the Space Shuttle program. A key part of Rosenthal’s work was his interview of some 20 people whom he identified as principals on the subject. These were not formal oral histories but rather, topic-specific statements made by people who were major contributors on the STDN over the years. The interviews were done in 1982 and 1983 but never published. Many of these people are now deceased. The author drew heavily on these interviews and many of the quotes are used throughout this book. The draft of Vital Links was turned over to the NASA History Division where it is archived. It was a primary reference for this work. In 1992, GSFC published the Contractor Report Keeping Track: A History of the GSFC Tracking and Data Acquisition Networks 1957 to 1991. It was edited by Kathleen M. Mogan and Frank P. Mintz. The report listed them as editors rather than coauthors because Keeping Track was, for the most part, edited together from Corliss’s 1974 and Rosenthal’s 1983 works. A final chapter was added which provided a very brief overview of the STDN in the 1980s. Mogan and Mintz included excerpts from about half of Rosenthal’s interviews at the end of the report in a section called “Personal Views.” They, in addition, conduct half a dozen interviews with key network personnel who were at Goddard in 1990. The material was then published by the GSFC as a reference report where it has circulated since.
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