All,
In January this year the Amateur Radio Exploration (AREx) team of ARISS and AMSAT submitted a no-cost proposal to fly hardware and cameras on NASA's Artemis II mission to the moon to bring "The Excitement and Inspiration of Artemis Journeys to a Worldwide Audience through Interactive Amateur Radio Experiences." Artemis 2 is the first planned human spaceflight mission to the moon. Like the Apollo 8 mission, it plans to orbit the moon and return to Earth. Recently we got word that we were not competitively selected for the mission.
I just found out who won the competition. The winners, National Geographic and Disney, were, in my opinion, unbeatable challengers for documenting and sharing truly historic events---especially the return of humans to the moon.
https://www.space.com/national-geographic-nasa-artemis-moon-mission-show
Despite this loss, the AREx team learned a great deal in the development of the proposal and were able to significantly refine our lunar payload design concept. A concept that can now meet Gateway payload requirements. This new design will position our amateur radio team for future lunar opportunity requests as well as to communicate our readiness to fly as a payload on the Lunar Gateway mission.
On behalf of the AREx team, my thanks to all that supported the maturation of our Lunar design and the development and submit of the proposal.
73, Frank KA3HDO
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Frank H. Bauer, KA3HDO
ARISS-USA Executive Director
ARISS International Chair