Tracking a Moon mission with the Dwingeloo telescope

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.© -

The Artemis I mission is currently still ongoing. Aboard the capsule that by now has orbited the Moon once and is on its way back to Earth, are several 'Moonikins' as well as a Snoopy and Shaun the Sheep. The goal of this first mission in the Artemis programme, that will eventually land people on the Moon, is to test several essential parts.

In a request for information, NASA asked organizations to aid in Doppler tracking the spacecraft. CAMRAS, the volunteer organization that operates the monumental Dwingeloo Radio Telescope, responded to this request, and is now one of 18 participants in this collaboration.

Tracking the mission is a big operation for CAMAS. We have been tracking the Orion module every day of the mission, for the majority of the time that it is above the horizon. The telescope has not seen this many consecutive days on sky since the end of its professional life in 1998. Keeping the telescope running requires two operators to be physically present in the telescope. So far, 24 different volunteers have acted as operator. Other volunteers are contributing by e.g. operating the elevator, changing the S-band feed, contributing software for recording, analyzing and streaming the raw data, etc.

Our contribution to this Moon mission, the first big one since Apollo, has not gone unnoticed. On the day of the launch, RTV Drenthe visited us, as well as SBS6 Hart van Nederland. One of the operators was interviewed in Radio 2 "De Staat van Stasse", and another interview was in Radio 2's "Jan-Willem Start op". An article about CAMRAS' involvement was featured in De Volkskrant.

All our tracking data is shared under an open license on data.camras.nl/artemis/. Also, while the mission is still ongoing, we stream our live signal to WebSDR.

Analyzing the results of this mission will keep us busy for quite a while after the (hopefully successful) splashdown this Sunday.