The fire in Madrid forces the evacuation of an essential facility for NASA

The advance of the fire through the southwest of Madrid has placed the focus on Robledo de Chavela, one of the municipalities affected by the emergency. There is also a communications complex that is part of the NASA Deep Space Networkused to maintain contact with missions located at enormous distances from Earth. The teams work to protect facilities whose importance is not always evident from the outside. What happens there affects a space infrastructure of international scope.

The clearest warning came from the Government delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín, which ensured that the installation “she is in a critical situation” and that the troops were doing “the impossible to protect her.” The fire was also going through its “peak moment”, with the head of the fire beyond the capacity to extinguish, according to the Community of Madrid. The approximately 90 workers at the complex have been evacuated and there is no longer any personnel inside the facility, so it is not yet possible to confirm whether the flames have penetrated the facilities or caused damage.

Xataka has contacted the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, and the Ministry of the Interior. From the center they have told us that They are coordinating with NASA headquarters and that they hope to have information soon. Interior had not responded at the time of writing this article.

One of NASA’s three doors to deep space

The threatened facility is the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex, known by its English acronym, MDSCC. Located in Robledo de Chavela, it belongs to the National Institute of Aerospace Technology and operates in collaboration with NASA. The facility has six large satellite dishesamong them one 70 meters in diameter and several 34 meters. They are all part of the Deep Space Networkthe international infrastructure used by the US agency to maintain communications with ships exploring the Solar System.

Madrid is one of the three pieces that support the global coverage of this network. The others are located in Goldstone, California, and Canberra, Australia, strategically placed so that the Earth’s rotation does not interrupt contact with the ships for too long. When a mission disappears below the horizon of Robledo de Chavela, it may enter the field of vision of one of the other two centers. This relay makes it possible to maintain practically continuous communications and distribute the tasks of monitoring, transmitting orders and receiving scientific data.

The scale of that activity is measured across the Deep Space Network, not by independent facilities. According to NASA, lto network serves more than 40 missions and a specialized team distributes the antenna time between the three complexes according to the visibility of each ship and the objectives of tracking, science and data return. These missions do not constitute, therefore, an exclusive portfolio of the Madrid station. The agency itself describes these antennas as an “indispensable link” with vehicles that venture beyond Earth.

A recent example allows us to better measure this role. On June 23, New Horizons controllers confirmed that the ship had woken up normally after 321 days of hibernation. At that time it was about 9.5 billion kilometers from Earth, so the signal took approximately 8 hours and 52 minutes to arrive. Confirmation reached the mission operations center in Maryland through the Deep Space Network station located near Madrid.

For now there is no official confirmation of damage, but it is not possible to rule it out either. Those responsible for the complex will not be able to check the status of the buildings, equipment and antennas until they can return to the premises. NASA has DSN Nowa tool that normally allows you to check which network antennas are active and which ships they communicate with. The page is currently out of service for updating work, a circumstance that does not allow conclusions to be drawn about the operational status of the Madrid station.

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