NASA is looking for volunteers to track next year's Artemis II Orion spacecraft during the crewed mission's roundtrip journey between the Earth and the Moon.

The US space agency is asking for those with the necessary capabilities to observe the Doppler shift on the Orion's S-band return link carrier signal. The monitoring is designed to achieve and keep a carrier lock solely for purposes of tracking the spacecraft. Volunteers will not be transmitting or uplinking signals. Orion's S-band range is between 2200 and 2290 MHz.

The crew aboard the Artemis II test mission will be NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman KF5LKT, the commander; Victor Glover KI5BKC, the pilot; and Christina Hammock Koch [pronounced "COOK"] as well as the Canadian Space Agency's astronaut Jeremy Hansen KF5LKU. The launch is expected to be no later than April of 2026 and the flight will last an estimated 10 days.

This planned flight follows the Artemis I mission of 2022 which featured an uncrewed Orion spacecraft that was tracked by 10 volunteers.

NASA hopes to hear from prospective candidates no later than 5 p.m. EDT on Monday, October 27th.

For more details see the link in the text version of this week's newscast at arnewsline.org