NASA selects 34 volunteers to track Orion during Artemis II lunar mission

NASA has selected 34 global volunteers to track the Orion spacecraft during the crewed Artemis II mission’s roughly 10-day journey around the Moon. Participants, chosen from a request for proposals published in August 2025, include commercial service providers, academic institutions, government agencies and individual amateur radio enthusiasts.

Using their own equipment, they will passively track radio waves transmitted by Orion and submit their data to NASA for analysis; no funds will be exchanged for this collaborative effort. NASA’s Near Space Network and Deep Space Network, coordinated by the agency’s Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) program, will provide primary communications and tracking services for launch, transit and return.

Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator for SCaN, said the effort advances SCaN’s commercial-first vision by inviting external organizations to demonstrate capabilities and by building a public–private ecosystem to support future exploration. The initiative builds on a 2022 campaign in which 10 volunteers tracked Orion during Artemis I; that effort produced data and lessons about implementation, formatting and data quality for the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, and SCaN now requires Artemis II tracking data to comply with its data system standards.

Key Topics

Science, Artemis Ii, Orion Spacecraft, Scan Program, Deep Space Network, Near Space Network