This year marks five and a half decades since that historic moment in which Neil Armstrong uttered the mythical phrase “this is one small step for a man, one giant leap for humanity.” Among the curiosities of the complicated trip, it is known that those words did not reach NASA headquarters in Houston directly, but rather to the antenna installed in a small town in Madrid, Fresnedillas de la Oliva.
Because when the Apollo Program became a national priority, the US space agency needed to expand its facilities and antennas throughout the globe. And Spain became a fundamental partner in that feat with agreements signed five years earlier. 60 years of uninterrupted cooperation that were just renewed just a few months ago, and that promise to be a fundamental part of NASA’s return to our satellite with the Artemis Program first and the arrival of the first person on Mars a few years later.
Due to the rotation of the Earth, several antennas were needed distributed throughout the globe so as not to lose communication with the spaceships and men who would go to the Moon. Here, in the center of the peninsula, three facilities were erected: apart from the one in Fresnedillas de la Oliva, more antennas were set up in Robledo de Chavela (a municipality also belonging to the Community of Madrid) and in Cebreros (Ávila), operated in collaboration with the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA).
These, together with the facilities in Canberra (Australia) and Goldstone (USA) formed the Deep Space Network (DSN), which still operates today and has been a critical part of missions as relevant as the arrival of the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers to Mars or the launch of the James Webb space telescope.
“Right now, this antenna is following Psyche,” says David Muñoz, responsible for the Robledo de Chavela antennas, referring to the NASA mission that was launched just a year ago and is heading to a unique asteroid made of iron. , nickel and gold that could have been part of the core of a small protoplanet. He points his finger at the ‘crown jewel’ of the complex, the 70-meter radio telescope, although the station has five other antennas: four 34-meter radio telescopes plus another 26-meter radio telescope.
«These facilities have something unique: there are six antennas, instead of four as in the rest of the Deep Space Network. This requires extra effort from all workers,” says Muñoz, who emphasizes that although the center had more than 400 employees in the good times of the Apolo Program, now there are less than a hundred. «And when there was only one antenna. Imagine now with six.
In reality, the complex has two other radio telescopes: the one that received the first message from man on the Moon – and which was moved in the mid-80s, when the US space agency decided to abandon the Fresnedillas and Cebreros facilities; and the first antenna that was built in Robledo de Chavela in the year 63. Both are out of service, but they continue to stand, pointing to the sky, witnesses of their history.
Recover Voyager 1
This does not mean that the Spanish facilities have lost prominence in NASA space missions: recently the six antennas performed the feat of recovering communication with Voyager 1, one of the twin spacecraft that was launched in the 70s and is already traveling outside the Solar System, still sending data.
«As we needed a lot of sensitivity, we pointed the six antennas towards the ship. It was the only station on the network that could do that,” Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator of NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation Program, tells ABC. “If it had not been for Robledo, we would not have recovered Voyager 1.” In fact, the present that the North American delegation gave to the Spanish officials and that was delivered yesterday at the official ceremony at the Robledo de Chavela facilities to immortalize the continuation of the collaboration between Spain and the United States is a night photo of the six radio telescopes pointing to the same point in the sky, 24,000 million kilometers from us.
Image of all Robledo de Chavela antennas pointing at Voyager 1
And, in the near future, Spanish facilities will be key for the Artemis Program. Without going any further, its antennas will be critical for Artemis 2, scheduled for September next year and the first manned mission to the Moon – although it will only orbit it and we will have to wait at least until 2027 and Artemis 3 to see a new lunar landing.
“Then we will continue developing technologies until we can stay on the Moon,” explains Coggins. “And then there’s the most surprising part: We’re going to learn to prepare to go to Mars, which is much further away,” Coggins says. This means that Robledo de Chavela will also be present at the arrival of humanity to Mars, scheduled for the next decade. Who knows if he will repeat the feat again and receive the first message from one of our people on the Martian surface.
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