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