Australia’s Key Role in Artemis Lunar Return Missions

Watch the Artemis II launch live here

If, like me, you’re under 54 years old, then you’ve only ever lived in a world where humans have been bound to the terrestrial sphere. Everyone who has ever lived or died in that time has been locked to terra firma, with the exclusion of a handful of lucky few who have been able to spend some time in Low-Earth Orbit.

That’s all about to change, and for many of us, this is going to be a first. Tomorrow, the launch window for NASA’s Artemis II mission opens, with four astronauts climbing into a spacecraft that will represent humanity’s return to deep space. When Artemis II lifts off (scheduled for 9:24 am AEDT Thursday, 2nd April 2026), it will carry the first crew to travel beyond low-Earth orbit in more than half a century. 

This time, the crew will also have the first woman (Mission Specialist Christina Koch) and the first person of colour (Pilot Victor Glover). Seismic shifts in representation as humanity extends its reach into the stars.

Inside the Orion capsule, the crew (which also includes Commander Reid Wiseman and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, from Canada's Space Agency - the first non-American to travel the distance) will witness something no human has seen in 54 years: the fragile blue sphere of Earth suspended in darkness, slowly rising above the lunar horizon. This view, immortalised in history books when Apollo 8 conducted a similar mission in December 1968, is now about to be experienced again through human eyes, and this time, they’ve got much more powerful digital cameras, too.

“So much has happened since the Earthrise photo,” said Space Archaeologist and Associate Professor Alice Gorman. “It seems the environmental movement has not had the impact promised in 1968, as climate change threatens to transform the world as we know it.”

“I think what we might expect from Artemis II is a sense of how the Earth and Moon form a single system. It’s not a space race this time, but a race for the planet’s survival, and we need to know more about our place in the Solar System to understand the way forward. I think this is what will resonate with people, if the crew respond to this.”

“Up until now, the script for space has been written largely by white, Christian, American, military men,” she said. “But the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says that space is for all humanity. If we’re really going to believe that and act on it, then space has to be open for other voices and other priorities.”

“I don’t think we can underestimate the significance of the Artemis II crew representing those voices. Hopefully, this is just the beginning.”

While much of the world will be focused on the rocket roaring off its launch pad in Florida, a quieter story will be unfolding on the other side of the planet. Thousands of kilometres away, in the rolling hills outside Australia’s capital Canberra, a team of Australian engineers, scientists and antenna operators from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, have been preparing to do something just as critical: listen.

When Orion sails into the darkness between the Earth and the Moon, the mission’s lifeline will run through a network of antennas strategically placed across the globe. And one of the important nodes in that network sits just over a two-hour drive from Sydney.

Tucked into a valley at Tidbinbilla is the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC), which has been supporting space missions for decades. It has listened to whispers from Mars rovers and relayed commands to humanity’s most distant spacecraft billions of kilometres away. The original Honeysuckle Creek antenna (DSS-46), now situated at CDSCC, famously helped carry the very first signals from Apollo 11, broadcasting the first few minutes of humans walking on another world (along with Murriyang, the CSIRO Parkes radio telescope) in 1969. Now, once again, the CDSCC is preparing for a moment that will be written into history.

“Australia has been making contributions to the global space industry since the establishment of the Woomera launch range in 1947,” said Prof. Gorman. “In the 1960s, Australia was a partner in a European rocket that launched from Woomera. This was the precursor to the European Space Agency.”

“People know about Australia’s role in receiving the first Apollo 11 images from the Moon in 1969 because of The Dish, but a lesser-known part of that history is that the Culgoora solar observatory in NSW provided space weather data to protect the Apollo astronauts.”

“The US turned to Australia to track its satellite Vanguard 1 in 1958, and Australia has developed great expertise in spacecraft tracking. For example, the CDSCC is one of just three tracking stations that communicate with the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft.”

“It’s a vital element of global spacecraft tracking networks. While the Artemis missions are branded as US, there’s a huge amount of international cooperation that makes any interplanetary mission successful. Australia has always been at the forefront of this with key facilities like the CDSCC.”

Artemis II won’t just be a symbolic return to the Moon mission. It’s the testbed that will break ground for everything that comes next. Life-support systems, navigation hardware, deep-space communications, and crew operations will all be tested in real lunar space for the first time since the end of the Apollo program. 

The mission also aims to successfully clear the path for Artemis III and Artemis IV -  which will be the crewed lunar mission that aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface. Behind the scenes, this makes Artemis II one of the most technically demanding crewed missions ever attempted. 

Once again, Australia finds itself standing quietly at the edge of humanity’s next great leap.

The Artemis campaign is NASA's most ambitious human spaceflight program since Apollo, building around new spacecraft, new launch systems, and international partnerships. It’s framed by NASA as a long-term plan to return humans to the Moon - establishing a sustained presence that will eventually allow the leap to Mars to be made, according to the agency.

However, Artemis is not just a NASA program - it's a global effort, which includes a major contribution from the European Space Agency, which provides the European Service Module that forms part of the Orion spacecraft responsible for propulsion, power and life-support systems.

The program’s first major test was the uncrewed Artemis I, which flew in late 2022. That mission sent the Orion on a long journey around the Moon and back to Earth, proving that the spacecraft could survive deep-space radiation, extreme temperature swings, and the blistering heat of atmospheric re-entry. Whilst some findings required addressing, Artemis I was a technical success. But it was also only the beginning.

Artemis II is where the stakes rise sharply. This upcoming mission will carry the crew on a trajectory to orbit the Moon, returning humans to deep space for the first time in more than five decades. Unlike Artemis I, every system must now work not just reliably, but with critical safety for the humans on board - from life support and navigation to communications and radiation shielding.

This is a big moment for America, and for the world. 

For more than half a century, human spaceflight has been confined to low-Earth orbit, where travellers are protected by the cocoon of Earth’s magnetic field, and the short travel times have allowed for rapid rescue options and/or evacuations. Artemis II breaks this. It pushes humans back into true deep space, where communications delays grow, radiation increases, and the psychological weight of distance becomes real.

At different stages of Orion’s journey out from Earth, into lunar orbit, then home, responsibility for tracking and communications will pass between three stations - like runners handing off a baton in a planetary relay race. For Australia, this means timed antenna handovers and monitoring telemetry streams that carry everything from spacecraft temperatures to astronaut health data.

Ensuring Orion is continually attached to Earth (through an electromagnetic umbilical cord of radio waves) from the moment it leaves the launch pad comes down to the Deep Space Network (DSN) - a trio of three ground stations spread roughly 120-degrees apart around Earth. 

This spacing is not accidental. As Earth rotates, spacecraft naturally drift in and out of view of any single antenna. By positioning DSN complexes in California, Spain, and Australia, NASA ensures that at least one station is always able to maintain contact with distant spacecraft in this constantly shifting global communications choreography. For Artemis II, this global relay will be essential. Commands sent from mission control, telemetry streaming back from the spacecraft, and navigation updates guiding Orion’s trajectory will all pass through the DSN antennas at various stages of the flight. 

“The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex will be an open line of communication between Earth and the mission,” said Rhianna Lyons who works in the CDSCC visitor centre as the Education Officer for Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO.

“We don't leave home without our mobile phones. Missions like these are no different. The astronauts will need to be able to call back home to Earth and that's what we're going to be facilitating and making sure they are able to do.”

Since 2017, the team of operators that run each DSN station utilise the ‘follow the Sun’ program, in which each station works its own daytime shift, controlling all global DSN telescopes for all deep space communication missions. When their day finishes, they hand over responsibility for all antennas to the next team, ensuring a continuous 24-hour cycle of monitoring for all missions.

“When on-shift, the CSIRO team will operate antennas across the Deep Space Network’s three facilities – locally, and at Goldstone in California and near Madrid in Spain – to communicate with Artemis II as well as the many other spacecraft exploring our Solar System and beyond,” said Lyons.

Whilst robotic explorers sent out to study the planets and beyond require a high degree of attention, the upcoming crewed lunar missions will demand higher communication reliability and faster decision response times. All anomalies that arise during the course of the crewed Artemis missions must be assessed quickly and relayed back to mission control within seconds. As Apollo 13 showed us, this umbilical cord is the only saving grace these astronauts will have.

“The complex has grown in the past 60 years,” said Lyons. “Just like people maintain, service and conduct pre-travel checks on a vehicle before you go on long journeys, CDSCC does the same with our antennas.”  

“We now have four large operational antennas that are not just going to be supporting Artemis, but will also be supporting the 40-plus missions exploring space.” 

Historically, communications between spacecraft and Earth (crewed or robotic) rely on traditional radio-frequency transmissions. Underpinning these is the allocation of portions of the radio frequency spectrum that is utilised for spacecraft tracking, telemetry, data, etc. This spectrum allocation, however, is finite and as technology has increased, as to have data rates and volumes creating a bottleneck problem. Equipment like cameras, sensors, and biometric devices are these days collecting exponentially more data per second than what was used on the Apollo missions. Even our smartphones do more these days.

In recent years, a new technology has started emerging as a complementary solution - laser optical communications. Instead of sending data using radio waves, laser communications transmit information using tightly focused beams of light. The advantage is enormous. Laser transmissions can carry far more data than radio light and are not limited by frequency spectrum allocations. Transmitting equipment doesn’t have to be a big antenna, and can therefore save precious real estate aboard the vehicle. 

For any future human exploration of the Moon, or even an eventual mission to Mars, this capability is not a should-have; it's a must-have. High-resolution video feeds, large scientific datasets, continuous health monitoring, and ‘real-time’ instrument control will require bandwidth levels far beyond what today’s radio systems were designed to handle.

Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) have been developing and operating an optical ground station designed to receive laser communications from deep-space spacecraft. Instead of radio waves, this new tech, called the ANU Quantum Optical Ground Station (QOGS), which is located at the Mount Stromlo Observatory, will use infrared light to track, transmit and receive communications from Orion.

As part of Artemis II, NASA plans to conduct this laser communications demonstration, transmitting recorded 4K ultra-high definition video, flight procedures, data, voice and images from Orion to Earth.

ANU researchers, working at the Mount Stromolo observatory, will be aiming to receive this data using the specialised ground station,  and analyse this data, helping validate the system’s performance under real mission conditions.

“ANU has been working with NASA teams to create a capability in the Southern Hemisphere to support the agency’s future optical communication needs,” said ANU Professor Francis Bennet, the Australian project lead for Artemis II. 

“We have been able to build cutting-edge capability rapidly thanks to investments from the Australian Government, and the collaboration with NASA and the work its teams have done to develop low-cost and reconfigurable optical communications systems.” 

Unlike radio antennas, optical communications require extreme precision. Laser beams are narrow, atmospheric turbulence can distort signals, and even tiny pointing errors can disrupt the link. Successfully receiving data from a spacecraft travelling hundreds of thousands of kilometres away is a technical challenge at the frontier of space communications engineering.

As Artemis II approaches its launch window, the DSN is operating under the growing demand of more spacecraft utilising the network and competing for limited antenna time.

That pressure intensified in 2023, when NASA’s largest antennas at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California suffered structural damage. The large 70-metre DSS-14 antenna was taken offline for repairs, removing an important node from the network at a time when spacecraft tracking and management demand is only increasing.

“The antenna (DSS-14) is not a part of the DSN Artemis II schedule, so its outage will not impact NASA’s communication during this mission,” said media relations specialist Ian O’Neill from NASA’s JPL. 

For Artemis II, this means that the 34-meter antennas (not the big 70-metre dishes) will be operating across Goldstone, Madrid and the CDSCC and will be able to maintain continuous coverage as the astronauts sail across deep space to our closest celestial neighbour.

But Artemis II is far from the only mission drawing on DSN resources.

At any given time, the network is supporting spacecraft orbiting Mars, probes travelling through the outer Solar System, and high-profile observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Complex scheduling conflicts sometimes arise, but the team always find the right path to balance shifting priorities, even if some science missions may experience temporary delays in data transmission.

Planetary missions also depend on DSN contact for navigation updates and course corrections. Add a crewed lunar mission into this mix, and the operational complexity rises sharply.

This is the hidden reality of modern space exploration: the challenge is no longer only launching spacecraft, but managing the finite infrastructure that keeps them connected to Earth.

With the Artemis II launch now potentially occurring in the next few hours, the pace behind the scenes is accelerating. Final hardware checks are underway. Systems are being put through final checks and re-checks. Mission controllers and engineering teams across the world are running full-scale last-minute simulations - practising everything from routine communications handovers to contingency scenarios that may never occur, but must be prepared for.

At Tidbinbilla, antenna schedules have been locked in. Tracking windows are now synchronised with mission timelines. Engineers and antenna controllers are well across the precise sequence of commands and handovers that will allow Orion to remain in constant contact with Earth as it rises into orbit, sails towards the far side of the Moon, and then begins its long journey home.

“All our operators, technicians and engineers have been preparing to support the Artemis missions for several years,” said Lyons.

“Just like the astronauts have to be continually training for their upcoming mission, the operators will also be running through drills and scenarios to ensure that all the communications throughout the mission go smoothly.”

On launch day itself, Australia will play an early role. As Orion disappears over the horizon from Florida and moves across the Southern Hemisphere sky, the Canberra DSN will track its global relay. Signals will be handed from station to station, antennas swinging slowly across the sky to follow a spacecraft.

There will be no public crowds at Tidbinbilla. No cheering spectators.

On that day, the control rooms will have the Canberra DSN operators sitting in front of their stations, with rows of screens streaming telemetry data, watching and monitoring the acquired signals from Orion. For this team, this historic milestone will be like any other day they show up to work - just numbers and data appearing on a monitor and indicators which confirm that contact with the vehicle is established and maintained. 

And yet, in these moments, something remarkable will be happening.

It will be the first time in more than half a century that humans will leave Earth’s proximity behind. They’ll be heading back to another world, and this time, carrying the excitement of an entire new generation. A generation that has never experienced this before. 

And in that little valley just outside Canberra, Australia will once again be listening as humanity takes its new steps back into deep space.