Learning to Phone Home

The first challenge of space exploration was getting hardware into space, but success also required the ability to accompany missions electronically through two-way communications that could guide payloads to exact destinations, set them to work gathering data, and send that data home. These devices and systems began in earnest with the Pioneer program of launching unmanned rockets to the moon. Pioneer 4, launched aboard the Juno II on March 3, 1959, flew past the moon and entered an orbit around the sun, sending home a huge cache of information received at the brand new communications complex at Goldstone Lake, California. Designed and managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, this was the birth of Deep Space Network, our telephone to the stars.

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