The 70-meter (230-foot) Goldstone dish, one of NASA's three Deep Space Network antennas - which manage voice, video and data traffic between the space agency and its probes dispersed across the solar system - will mark its 40th birthday this June. At the time of Armstrong's broadcast, the dish's diameter was 64 meters (210 feet).

In addition to relaying messages from astronauts on all of the Apollo lunar missions, the dish and its twins – in Madrid, Spain, and Canberra, Australia - has communicated with the computers and equipment on every one of NASA's major robotic solar system explorers.

For example, Goldstone received the first-ever close-up images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, their rings and their myriad moons, by the Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo and Cassini missions. It also has communicated with all of NASA's current Mars missions, including the Global Surveyor and Odyssey spacecraft, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and the newly arrived Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The antenna's conception actually goes back to 1963, when NASA engineers were relying on smaller antennas to keep tabs on space missions, which at the time ventured only as far as low Earth orbit. With the development of the Mariner Mars missions, however, scientists and engineers required more powerful communications tools. So the agency approved a 64-meter antenna at Goldstone - the first of the three DSN sites – and awarded Rohr Corp. a $12 million contract to design and build the dish.

After two years of construction, a testing phase began to determine how well the antenna would receive signals. In March 1966, engineers pointed the dish toward Mariner 4, which had been lost by smaller antennas after its historic Mars flyby in 1965. The Goldstone antenna re-acquired Mariner 4's signal, and it became known informally as the Mars antenna.

After three months of calibrations and personnel training, Deep Space Station 14 – its formal name - became operational in June 1966.

The trio of DSN dishes are placed about 120 degrees apart around the world. As Earth rotates, this placement permits ground controllers to maintain constant observation of robotic spacecraft exploring the solar system.

Goldstone also relayed the equally famous message, "Houston, we have a problem," from Apollo 13. During the critical re-entry of that capsule, the dish was able to maintain contact with its radio signal, which was operating on minimal power, helping to bring the crew home safely.

In 1988, NASA enlarged the dish's size to 70 meters to enhance communications with the Voyager 2 flyby of the planet Neptune.

Today, NASA also uses the Goldstone antenna for solar system radar, and imaging nearby planets, asteroids and comets. It does this by transmitting a 500,000-watt signal to bounce off of the object and return the resulting signal to Earth. Radar also enables scientists to compute the paths of asteroids and comets and determine whether any might be a possible future threat to Earth.

In conjunction with other radio telescopes, the antenna is used for Very Long Baseline Interferometry, to measure Earth's spatial orientation precisely - information that helps spacecraft navigation.

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