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Spacecraft
Calling Home
Low Gain Antennae
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The communications, control, and data management system is the
nerve center of the Observatory. It keeps track of the position
of the spacecraft in its orbit, monitors the spacecraft sensors,
receives and processes commands from the ground for the
operation of the Observatory, and stores and processes the data
from the instrument so that it can be transmitted to the
ground.
Chandra has two low gain antennae, either one of which may be
used for two-way communications with Chandra's Operations
Control Center (OCC). All ground commands to and from Chandra
along with telemetry data -- sent through a set of three NASA
ground stations constituting its Deep Space Network -- are
routed through one of these antennae, typically about once every
eight hours.
The data are transmitted from the Deep Space Network stations to
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and from there to the Operations
Control Center at the Chandra X-ray
Center (CXC) in Cambridge,
MA. There the data are processed and made available to
scientists, and eventually put in public archives.
More Chandra Specifications [pdf | html]
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