relay satellite

Missions to the moon’s far side are more difficult because it doesn’t face the Earth, requiring a relay satellite to maintain communications.

Missions to the moon’s far side are more difficult because it doesn’t face the Earth, requiring a relay satellite to maintain communications.

Because the far side never faces Earth, a relay satellite is a needed to maintain communications.

According to NASA’s website, after an astronaut fills out an electronic absentee ballot aboard the space station, the encrypted document goes through a tracking and data relay satellite to a ground antenna at the White Sands Complex in New Mexico.

This is ICS-EF, a Japanese communications package for sending data between the ISS Kibo module and Mission Control Tsukuba via the Kodama data relay satellite.