HWBRIEF
NASA's Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex evacuated Friday as a wildfire moved through the hills west of the city. Operations shifted to the California sister site.
A fast-moving wildfire in the hills west of Madrid on Friday forced NASA to evacuate the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex, one of three ground stations the agency uses to stay in continuous contact with spacecraft from the Moon to interstellar space.
The Madrid facility sits roughly 40 miles west of central Madrid, anchored by a 230-foot (70-meter) radio dish and surrounded by smaller 112-foot (34-meter) antennas. It is part of the Deep Space Network, the "follow the Sun" system that hands off between Madrid, the Goldstone complex in California, and a sister site near Canberra, Australia, so distant spacecraft always see an antenna during the day. The network is managed by NASA's Space Communications and Navigation program and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The DSN supports more than 40 active missions, including Artemis, the program returning humans to the Moon; the James Webb Space Telescope, the agency's flagship space observatory; and the twin Voyager probes, now in interstellar space.
After the evacuation, operations moved to Goldstone. A NASA spokesperson told Ars Technica the agency "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," and added that "[a]ny potential damage will be assessed when it is safe to do so."
The fire is one of several burning across Spain. NASA has not released imagery of the site beyond pre-evacuation photos, and the physical state of the antennas remains unknown.