The antenna and terminal infrastructure were newly completed in 2002 with successful pointing tests conducted with NASA's Stardust mission, and the station entered service as ESA's first deep-space station in March 2003.
The mechanical movable structure weighs 580 tonnes. Engineers can point it with a speed of 0.4 degrees per second in both axes (horizontal and vertical). Its Servo Control System provides the highest possible pointing accuracy under the site's environmental, wind and temperature conditions.
The New Norcia antenna is one of the largest in the world for telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C) applications. It is essential for high-performance communications with spacecraft far out in space and missions in highly elliptical orbits which take them far from Earth.
The station, known as DSA-1, is used to track deep-space missions and provides daily support to Mars Express, Rosetta, Venus Express, Herschel and Planck for routine operations.
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