Pitt students track Orion spacecraft as part of Artemis II mission: "It's really an honor."

In a historic trip through space, four astronauts who have successfully circled the moon on the Artemis II mission will hopefully be in the home stretch and splashing down on Friday. 

The mission is crucial to bringing in new information for NASA, science, and the future of space travel. The Artemis II mission was being studied right in Pittsburgh as well. 

The University of Pittsburgh was one of eight schools picked by NASA to track the Orion spacecraft and report data found for future use.

From atop Benedum Hall in Oakland, the Panther Amateur Radio Club, engineering students, and faculty used a mix of analog devices and AI to track the mission in real time. They started at 4 a.m. on Thursday and used a radio signal trying to reach the Artemis craft as it treks its way home.

"It is really incredible that we were in the right place at the right time to track this mission," said Pitt student Sawyer Mervis.

"We have a set that we designed that the students have been working on for months to put together and figure out how to assemble to kind of listen in to that radio signal as it travels to the moon and back," said Sam Dickerson, the associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Pitt. "NASA gives us information about the frequencies that the Orion spacecraft is going to transmit on. So then the students have to design a setup that includes antenna design, filter amplification, and a radio to listen to that signal."

But, of course, sending a signal through space would be rather noisy. Over the next week, the University of Pittsburgh group will analyze all their data to see if they successfully picked up Orion's signal. They will then give all the information they recorded to NASA.

"You can imagine trying to listen to a radio that's a couple of hundred thousand miles away, so there are a lot of technical challenges. The signal is very small and faint," said Dickerson.

Overall, the data they do find will be shared with NASA to help them understand how outside institutions and people can support the space program in the future.

"It's really an honor that we get to work on the project," said Mervis.