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...

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 tracking 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...