Regardless of how sophisticated it may be, no spacecraft is of any value unless it can be tracked accurately to determine where it is and how it is performing.

At the height of the space race, 6,000 men and women operated NASA’s Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network at some two dozen locations across five continents. This network, known as the STDN, began its operation by track-ing Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite that was launched into space by the former Soviet Union. Over the next 40 years, the network was destined to play a crucial role on every near-Earth space mission that NASA flew.

Whether it was receiving the first television images from space, tracking Apollo astronauts to the Moon and back, or data acquiring for Earth science, the STDN was that intricate network behind the scenes making the missions possible. Some called it the “Invisible Network,” a hallmark of which was that no NASA mission has ever been compromised due to a net-work failure.

Read You Loud and Clear! is a historical account of the STDN, starting with its formation in the late 1950s to what it is today in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It traces the roots of the tracking network from its beginnings at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico to the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) space-based constellation of today.

The story spans the early days of satellite tracking using the Minitrack Network, through the expansion of the Satellite Tracking And Data Acquisition Network (STADAN) and the Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN), and finally, to the Space and Ground Networks of today.

Written from a nontechnical perspec-tive, the author has translated a highly techni-cal subject into historical accounts told within the framework of the U.S. space program. These accounts tell how international goodwill and for-eign cooperation were crucial to the operation of the network and why the space agency chose to 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.”

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By Sunny Tsiao
The NASA History Series
www.nasa.gov
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NASA History Division Office of External Relations
Washington, DC 2008
NASA SP-2007-4233

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 A 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 spaceflight 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. ...

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