Which network of antennas communicates with JWST?

The Deep Space Network communicates with the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA’s DSN is a worldwide system of large radio antennas that sends commands to Webb and receives its telemetry and scientific data.

The network has major complexes near Goldstone, California; Madrid, Spain; and Canberra, Australia. They are spaced roughly 120 degrees apart around Earth, allowing one site to take over as Earth rotates and Webb moves out of another site’s view. This arrangement provides near-continuous communication coverage.

JWST uses different radio bands for different jobs. S-band supports command uplinks, lower-rate telemetry, and ranging, while Ka-band handles high-rate science-data and telemetry downlinks. Webb carries both a Ka-band high-gain antenna and an S-band medium-gain antenna.

Parkes and Arecibo are famous radio observatories, but neither is JWST’s primary communications network. ALMA is an astronomical array in Chile used for science observations, not mission command and data transmission. Webb operates near the Sun–Earth L2 point, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.