A fast-moving wildfire, one of many raging across Spain, bore down on the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex on Friday, forcing an evacuation and temporarily suspending operations at one of NASA’s most important tracking stations.
The tracking station is part of NASA’s Deep Space Network, operating in concert with similar facilities in California and Australia to provide global coverage as Earth’s rotation brings the planets, stars, and deep space probes in and out of view. The network supports more than 40 missions from the Moon to the edge of the Solar System, including Artemis, the James Webb Space Telescope, and NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft.
A NASA spokesperson confirmed the tracking station in Spain, located in the hills nearly 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of central Madrid, was evaluated Friday “due to ongoing wildfires in the region. Photos and video from the area showed flames and smoke plumes rising over the ground station’s antenna array, anchored by a 230-foot-diameter (70-meter) radio dish and a collection of smaller 112-foot (34-meter) antennas.
“Any potential damage will be assessed when it is safe to do so,” the spokesperson said in a statement. The Deep Space Network is managed by NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA officials are monitoring wildfires in the Madrid region in coordination with local authorities and the US Embassy.
“In the meantime, the agency has seamlessly transitioned support for mission operations to the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California, ensuring continuity of service and uninterrupted support for spacecraft communications,” the NASA spokesperson said.
High demand and short supply
NASA typically runs the Deep Space Network using a “follow the Sun” model, in which control centers at each DSN site in Australia, California, and Spain can remotely operate the entire network during local daytime hours. Antennas at each location operate around the clock.
A NASA website providing status updates on each DSN complex showed no activity at the Madrid site Friday afternoon, while antennas at the California and Australia locations were communicating with several NASA spacecraft, such as Voyager 2 and Juno, exploring interstellar space and Jupiter, respectively.
No activity at the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex on Friday afternoon.
Credit: NASA
“The safety and well‑being of our personnel is our highest priority and our thoughts are with the families and neighbors who are also experiencing the impact of the wildfires in the surrounding communities,” NASA said. “We will provide updates as conditions evolve.”
A separate deep space tracking station owned and operated by the Spanish government and the European Space Agency was also evacuated due to wildfires, according to Spanish news reports. The Cebreros tracking station, part of ESA’s Estrack network, is located a few miles away from NASA’s DSN facility.
Reuters reported Friday that Spanish authorities ordered more than 19,000 people to evacuate from towns in the mountains west of Madrid. More than 2,000 personnel and 10 aircraft were deployed to combat the wildfires. A summer heat wave and chronic drought conditions have made conditions ripe for wildfires across Spain and France.
Without the Madrid location, the Deep Space Network is down to one operational 70-meter radio antenna in Australia. The 70-meter antenna in California has been offline since last year due to an accident that “over-rotated” the structure. The incident damaged cables and water lines, flooding the base of the antenna with 200,000 gallons of water containing glycol, an environmental hazard.
The cleanup and repair is projected to cost between $4.1 million and $4.6 million. NASA officials are combining the repairs with already-planned upgrades. The work is expected to keep the antenna offline into 2028.
The good news for DSN is the next Artemis mission to the Moon is still at least a couple of years away. Artemis missions put high demand on DSN, with additional requirements for telemetry and imagery downlinks to support human spaceflight. Artemis III will now fly in low-Earth orbit to test the Orion capsule with commercial Moon landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin. Artemis IV, the program’s first planned lunar landing with astronauts, is targeted for no earlier than 2028.
