Usuda Deep Space Center is a facility of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

The , or JAXA, is Japan's national aerospace agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on October 1, 2003, as an Independent Administrative Institution administered by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and the...

  It is a spacecraft tracking station
opened in October, 1984. The main feature of the station is a 64 meter beam waveguide antenna

Beam waveguide antenna

A beam waveguide antenna is a specific variety of parabolic dish that sends the transmitted or received signal from a stationary transmitter or receiver to a movable dish by means of a beam waveguide. With a conventional parabolic antenna, the transmitter or receiver is mounted at the focus, and...

. This was the first deep-space antenna constructed with beam-waveguide technology.

Before Usuda, the beam-waveguide construction, which dramatically simplifies installation and maintenance of electronics, was thought to offer poor noise performance. However, after the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) tested this antenna and found the noise performance better than their conventional 64-meter antennas, they too switched to this method of construction for all subsequent antennas of their Deep Space Network

Deep Space Network

The Deep Space Network, or DSN, is a world-wide network of large antennas and communication facilities that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions. It also performs radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe, and supports selected...

(DSN).