An assembly of spacecraft components that collect, process, store, and transmit payload-mission and bus-housekeeping data. The communication and data-handling subsystem (CDHS) acts as the ears, brain, and mouth of the spacecraft
• It has two primary portions — communication and data handling
• It translates raw data from the payloads and subsystems into useful information and sends it to the ground system
• Commands from ground controllers generally request information from and give specific instructions to individual subsystems