Track NASA’s Artemis II Mission in Real Time

As NASA invites the public to follow the Artemis II mission as a crew of four astronauts venture around the Moon inside the agency’s Orion spacecraft, people around the world can pinpoint Orion during its journey using the Artemis Real-time Orbit Website (AROW).

During the approximately 10-day mission, NASA will test how the spacecraft’s systems operate as designed with crew aboard in the deep space environment. Using AROW, anyone with internet access can track where Orion and the crew are, including their distance from Earth, distance from the Moon, mission duration, and more. Access to AROW is available on:

• NASA’s website (www.nasa.gov/trackartemis)
• The NASA app (www.nasa.gov/nasa-app)

Using AROW, the public can visualize data that is collected by sensors on Orion and then sent to the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston during its flight. It will provide constant information using this real-time data beginning about one minute after liftoff through Orion’s atmospheric reentry to Earth at the end of the mission.

Online, users can follow AROW to see where Orion and the Artemis II crew are in relation to the Earth and the Moon and follow Orion’s path during the mission.

Credit: NASA

Online, users can follow AROW to see where Orion and the crew are in relation to the Earth and the Moon and follow Orion’s path during the mission. Users can view key mission milestones and characteristics on the Moon, including information about landing sites from the Apollo program.

The mobile app includes similar features to the website, with the addition of augmented reality tracker. After a brief calibration sequence, on-screen indicators will direct users where to move their phone to see where Orion currently is relative to their position on Earth. Mobile app tracking will be available once Orion separates from the rocket’s upper stage, approximately three hours into the mission.

The AROW mobile app includes similar features to the website, with the addition of augmented reality tracker that will direct users where to move their phone to see where Orion currently is relative to their position on Earth.

Credit: NASA

State vectors, or data that describes precisely where Orion is located and how it moves, also will be provided by AROW, following a proximity operations demonstration to evaluate the manual handling qualities of Orion. 

These vectors can be used for data lovers, artists, and creatives to make their own tracking app or data visualization. Also available for download will be trajectory data from the flight, called an ephemeris, found at the bottom of this page, after the mission begins. The ephemeris data can be used to track Orion with your own spaceflight software application or telescope, or to create projects such as a physics model, animation, visualization, or tracking application.

Artemis II, the agency’s first crewed mission in the Artemis campaign, is a key step in NASA’s path toward establishing a long-term presence at the Moon and confirming the systems needed to support future lunar surface exploration and paving the way for the first crewed mission to Mars.

To learn more about NASA’s Artemis campaign, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/artemis  

Source: Track NASA’s Artemis II Mission in Real Time - NASA