Cassini

Telecommunications Description

Communications for Cassini will be primarily through the 34 m and 70 m DSN antennas. The three DSN complexes will support cruise operations roughly equally, but the Madrid and Goldstone sites will be used more often than the Canberra site after orbital insertion at Saturn.

The spacecraft will utilize its 4 m fixed high-gain antenna (HGA) and two wide-beam low-gain antennas (LGA). These all communicate with X-band transceivers. The HGA will transmit data to Earth at a frequency of 7.15 GHz. The uplink frequency will be 8.425 GHz.

The HGA also has built-in Ka-, Ku-, and S-band transmit/receive capabilities. Science data return and commanding takes place in both the Ka- and S-band. Probe relay takes place only in the S-band. The Ku-band is dedicated to the transmission and receipt of data and commanding for the radar subsystem.