New Horizons VLA Experiment

The New Horizons spacecraft is set to reach 63 astronomical units (AU) from Earth. During this time, the spacecraft has, and will continue to, provide multi-disciplinary observations of the solar system and beyond. Capturing scientific data through instruments on the spacecraft only matters if this data can be transmitted back, and received on Earth. As spacecraft travel father from Earth, the received signal power diminishes. Utilizing resources available on Earth in addition to NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) may aid in recovering more of this power. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NRAO) Very Large Array (VLA) asset may be used in addition to the DSN as a resource for receiving downlink data for deep space missions. In 2018, three fifteen-minute New Horizons downlink captures were recorded with the VLA and concurrently with NASA’s DSS-14. This work implements a downlink receive chain which performs carrier, subcarrier, symbol, and telemetry recovery on the VLA data and compares this data with that received from DSS-14. These captures allow direct comparisons of carrier-to-noise and symbol-to-noise ratios of Deep Space Station (DSS)-14 to the larger and therefore more sensitive VLA. Higher receiver sensitivity can provide major benefits to deep space missions: an extended life of the mission, faster return for the collected science data set, and the opportunity to increase the science collected in an extended mission.