Guam’s relay antennas are back, and the station’s coverage gap is closed
A 10 September ribbon-cutting marked the end of a rebuild that began when Typhoon Mawar tore the site up in 2023.
NASA marked the restoration of the Guam Remote Station on 10 September 2026. The central antenna had already returned to service on 1 July. The ribbon-cutting closed more than three years of work after Super Typhoon Mawar.
Mawar hit on 24 May 2023 with 185 mph winds. Two 16.5-metre antennas were destroyed, and an 11-metre antenna and the inter-facility building were damaged. Guam is one of three ground stations for the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites. Those satellites, about 22,000 miles up, are how flight controllers talk to crews and spacecraft in low Earth orbit. Guam covers the stretch of orbit the other relays cannot see. Without it, the station can lose contact for up to 20 minutes of every 90-minute orbit.
Emergency repairs and two borrowed Army terminals brought partial service back in time for a November 2023 spacewalk. Congress set disaster-relief money aside in early 2025. The rebuilt central antenna rejoined the relay network in summer 2026. The same money upgraded three other Near Space Network stations.
This is the unphotogenic side of a spacewalk. The suit camera gets the headline. The radome in Dededo is why the call still connects. Deep-space missions use a different network. The pattern is the same: no ground station, no mission.
Desk note from a public release. Source: NASA. This site is not the agency.