Communication with Voyager 1 depends on its 3.7-metre high-gain antenna, which transmits narrow-beam radio signals using only about 20 watts of power, comparable to a refrigerator light bulb. These signals are received by NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), a system of massive dish antennas in California, Spain, and Australia. The DSN’s sensitive receivers amplify the faint X-band signal, now billions of times weaker than a typical FM radio broadcast, before computers decode it into scientific readings and engineering status updates.