In honor of the 50th anniversary of NASA's Deep Space Network -- the system of giant antennas positioned around the world  to communicate with distant spacecraft -- I was tasked with creating a graphical timeline of the network's development. The serpentine signals sent from the Deep Space Network expand as they reach farther into space, like the focal point of a flashlight. So the wave at the middle of the graphic is meant to pay homage to that  idea as well as the growth the network has seen over the years.