{"id":596567,"date":"2026-04-09T22:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/596567\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T22:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:15:11","slug":"how-the-parkes-dish-is-helping-track-artemis-ii-on-its-historic-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/596567\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Parkes Dish is helping track Artemis II on its historic journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 50 years on from assisting the Apollo missions, the CSIRO Parkes Observatory is continuing its lunar legacy with Artemis II’s historic mission.<\/p>\n

The mission is humanity’s first journey toward the Moon since 1972, travelling further from Earth than any human has ever been before and capturing never-before-seen footage of the far side of the Moon.<\/p>\n

In the New South Wales Central West, the radio telescope made famous in the classic Australian movie The Dish has been tracking the spacecraft on its lunar journey.<\/p>\n

\"Sam<\/p>\n

The Dish featured Sam Neill (centre) and detailed the role the Parkes Observatory played in the first Moon landing.\u00a0 (Supplied: Working Dog Productions)<\/p>\n

“During the close approach to the Moon, Parkes was tracking it,” CSIRO operations scientist John Sarkissian said.<\/p>\n

“We were able to see the spacecraft disappear behind the Moon.<\/p>\n

“It was really fascinating to see the signal suddenly drop out and then reappear about 40 minutes later.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Parkes Observatory’s radio telescope is among the facilities assisting with tracking Artemis II. (Supplied: John Sarkissian)<\/p>\n

The Artemis operations are part of NASA’s plans to put astronauts on the Moon in 2028, and potentially build a permanent lunar base in the future.<\/p>\n

“There is going to be a lot of traffic,” Mr Sarkissian said.<\/p>\n

“With the increasing number of missions going to the Moon, [NASA] just don’t have capacity to support that all the time.<\/p>\n

“It gives them great confidence that if in the future they do need our support, we will be there and will give them world-class service.”<\/p>\n

\"John<\/p>\n

John Sarkissian has assisted with tracking Artemis II from Parkes. (Supplied: John Sarkissian)<\/p>\n

Over the course of the Artemis II mission, the Parkes Observatory has been assisting NASA’s Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex and the Australian National University’s Quantum Optical Ground Station.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft is expected to land back on Earth on Saturday morning, Australian time.<\/p>\n

Lunar legacy<\/p>\n

The Dish \u2014 as it was known by locals long before the film \u2014 first assisted with tracking space missions in 1962, before playing a crucial role in the Apollo missions.<\/p>\n

\"Parkes<\/p>\n

NASA diverted to Parkes Observatory’s feed of the moon landing in 1969 after Canberra’s Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station broadcast the first eight minutes. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

In 1969, it assisted with beaming footage of a human’s first walk on the Moon to more than 600 million people.<\/p>\n

“We played vital roles in Apollo 11 \u2026 receiving the TV pictures of the famous moonwalk,” Mr Sarkissian said.<\/p>\n

“For Apollo 13, we were able to receive their extremely weak signals coming from the crippled spacecraft.<\/p>\n

“Mission Control was able to decipher the signals and figure out what was wrong and get the astronauts back safely.”<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

The Parkes Murriyang Dish has been operating since 1961. (Supplied: CSIRO)<\/p>\n

Mr Sarkissian said decades later, the telescope was capable of far more.<\/p>\n

“We are able to do much, much more than we did back in the 60s and 70s with Apollo,” he said.<\/p>\n

“In the past you needed racks and racks of equipment with a lot of people on site.<\/p>\n

“Nowadays our computing power is much more and during the tracking it was just me in the tower doing it.”<\/p>\n

In 2020, Wiradjuri elders gave the observatory’s 64-metre telescope a traditional Indigenous name \u2014 Murriyang.<\/p>\n

Inspiring the next generation<\/p>\n

The first crewed Apollo mission took place in 1968, before the program came to an end in 1972.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Artemis II mission is part of NASA’s plans to put astronauts on the Moon for the first time since 1972. (Supplied: NASA)<\/p>\n

The Artemis II mission is the first time astronauts have travelled to the Moon since then.<\/p>\n

“[I spent] all of my adult life and a big chunk of my childhood daydreaming of the day we return to the Moon,” Mr Sarkissian said.<\/p>\n

“Now it has finally arrived but it is not going to be one or two missions a year, it is going to be continuous missions.”<\/p>\n

Mr Sarkissian predicted the new space program would leave a similar legacy to Apollo.<\/p>\n

“I remember watching the Apollo 11 moonwalk with my fellow first graders \u2026 it inspired an entire generation,” he said.<\/p>\n

“These missions will do the same with this new generation of school kids.<\/p>\n

“It will inspire them to look up and want to get involved in science.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 50 years on from assisting the Apollo missions, the CSIRO Parkes Observatory is continuing its lunar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[141358,291202,216872,64,63,6076,308,44828,131,141356,128,285,29397],"class_list":{"0":"post-596567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-apollo-11","9":"tag-apollo-project","10":"tag-artemis-ii","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-csiro","14":"tag-exploration","15":"tag-moon-landing","16":"tag-nasa","17":"tag-parkes-observatory","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-space","20":"tag-the-dish"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}