Comet Enthusiast

Deep Space Station 14 is hidden inside a remote federally owned swath of the Mojave known as Goldstone, like a setting in a scifi movie. The antenna, little known outside JPL and NASA's Washington, D.C., headquarters, is informally dubbed the "Mars Antenna" because its initial task, in 1966, was to track a spacecraft after it flew past Mars . Its dominant feature is its parabolic dish, which stretches nearly the length of a football field and weighs, struts and radio equipment included, nearly 2,000 tons tracks asteroids, rovers on distant planets, and probes rocketing through space as far as 11 billion miles away. 

Although there are larger antenna, none match Deep Space Station 14 for its combination of communications power and historical significance, said Cornell astronomy professor Steven Squyres, lead scientific investigator for the Mars Rover project in an interview with the LA Times. If the dish -- scanning space with the help of a pair of newer, nearly identical antennas in Spain and Australia -- didn't exist, he said, "the rovers we send into space just might as well not even be there. We wouldn't even be able to try."