PULSE OF EXPLORATION
A sculpture monitoring the heartbeat of deep space communications

concept / Design: dan goods
Creative Technologist: Andrew Nagata
Design: Daniel innocente

This sculpture reacts to real-time communications between 30+ interplanetary spacecraft missions and the Deep Space Network. Communication sent to a spacecraft triggers streams of light upward. Lights downward represent data coming down for the first time from one of these spacecraft. The more activity in the lights, the more data is being transmitted. The sculpture cycles through the various missions that the DSN is currently communicating with at this moment.

This all came about because of a trip my buddy David Delgado and I had to Goldstone years ago. It is one of three NASA compounds around the world (the other two in Madrid Spain and Canberra Australia) of large radio antenna, some as large as 70m wide, that communicate with all the spacecraft at the moon or beyond. Together they are called the Deep Space Network. While there we commented on how fascinating it was that data was raining down on us at this moment, but you have no way of knowing. Years later my team at JPL was given the opportunity to update the lobby of the Directors building. We thought this was a great way to give people a sense of the immediacy of work being done at JPL.