Continental Electronics Corporation (CEC) was called upon by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to modernize the largest steerable parabolic antenna in the Southern Hemisphere, located in Canberra, Australia.  This antenna is a critical point of communication for interplanetary explorations and data transmissions for spacecraft in line of sight to Earth.  It had not been updated in over 47 years and the project would help JPL add capacity to its deep space network, supporting NASA's growing number of missions.  

CEC required a custom motor control center (MCC) to support cooling functions for sensitive electronics.  This critical component would help ensure electronics remain in peak operating condition when performing the energy-intensive task of sending and receiving data billions of miles outside of our atmosphere. 

Eaton provided a tailored, customized, motor control solution to enable CEC to modernize the DSS-43 deep space antenna.

Following completion of the project,  JPL successfully transmitted a set of commands to the Voyager 2 spacecraft which had not been able to be performed during the downtime, and verified that they were correctly received.

Today the new transmitter systems support all Deep Space missions, including the Perseverance Mars rover and will be part of the worldwide communication system supporting future Moon and Mars missions.