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Usuda Deep Space Center is a facility of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. It is a spacecraft tracking station opened in October, 1984. The main feature of the station is a 64 meter beam waveguide antenna. 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 U.S. Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) tested this antenna and found the noise performance was better than its conventional 64-meter antennas, it too switched to this method of construction for all subsequent antennas of their Deep Space Network (DSN).
