How does Kepler communicate with Earth?
The telecom subsystem will be used for receiving commands and for transmitting engineering, science and navigation data back to Earth. It is designed to operate out to a distance of 96 million kilometers (about 60 million miles). The system uses a parabolic dish high-gain antenna for transmitting, two receiving low-gain antennas and two transmitting low-gain antennas. The system can receive commands from Earth at speeds ranging from 7.8 to 2,000 bits per second, and can send data to Earth at speeds from 10 to 4.3 million bits per second. This transmission capability is the highest data rate of any NASA mission to date. Telecommunications and navigation support for the mission are provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN). During the science phase of the mission, Kepler will perform its data-gathering duties automatically. Twice a week, the operations team contacts the spacecraft to assess its health and status and upload any new command sequ
