The ability to receive communications from distant spacecraft and very distant astronomical objects is limited by the collecting area on earth. During the past few decades the pardigm for increasing area has shifted from larger single reflectors to arrays of small antennas which offer more total collecting area, higher angular resolution, and the ability to image or form multiple beams. The applications and new technologies to be applied in these arrays will be discussed. These technolgies include hydroformed aluminum reflector antennas, wideband antenna feeds, cyrogenic MMIC low noise amplifiers, photonic data tranmission systems, and very high speed digital signal processing.