Spacecraft Tracking and Data Acquisition Network

Orroral Valley STADAN control panel, at the National Museum of Australia

The Spacecraft Tracking and Data Acquisition Network (STADAN) was established ny NASA to satisfy the requirement for long-duration, highly-available space-to-ground communications.

Consisting of parabolic dish antennas and telephone switching equipment deployed around the world, the STADAN provided space-to-ground communications for approximately 15 minutes of a 90-minute orbit period. This limited contact-period sufficed for unmanned spacecraft, but manned spacecraft require a much higher data collection time.

Stations

STADAN stations were at:

• Orroral Valley - Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

Later Developments

The follow-on network, called the Manned Space flight Network (MSFN), interacted with manned craft in Earth orbit. Another network, the Deep Space Network (DSN), interacted with manned craft higher than 10,000 miles from Earth, such as the Apollo missions, in addition to its primary mission of data collection from deep space probes.