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In April 1963, the public was invited to visit Goldstone Tracking Station, a part of the Deep Space Network located in California's Mojave Desert. This image shows several visitors to the Echo site watching as a staff member explains how the equipment was used to control the 26 meter antenna and communicate with robotic spacecraft in deep space. Visitors were taken by bus to the widely separated sites at Goldstone (Pioneer, Echo, Venus, and Mini-Track) where they could view the large antennas, models and displays, and talk to the people who operated the tracking station.

Signs can be seen on most pieces of equipment, identifying them and helping to explain their role in spacecraft communications. One reads "Antenna Servo Amplifiers -- and new class test equipment and power supplies. This equipment facilitates testing and maintenance of the servo amplifers plus supplying the power to operate the servo valves. The servo valves control the hydraulic fluid that operate the antenna drive motors."

Howard Olsen, wearing a bow tie, was there to answer visitors' questions, along with the unidentified man sitting at the console. Eberhardt Rechtin, Program Director of the Deep Space Instrumentation Facility (sometimes referred to as chief architect of the Deep Space Network) can be seen behind the woman in the dark coat. Next to him is Walt Larkin, the Goldstone site manager.

For more information about the Goldstone Tracking Station and the Deep Space Network, please contact the JPL Archives or read the NASA Special Publication entitled Uplink-Downlink: A History of the Deep Space Network, 1957-1997, by Douglas J. Mudgway. There is also a JPL web site about the Deep Space Network.