Lunar Gateway and Amateur Radio

Almost all of you will be aware of Amateur Radio on International Space station or ARISS in which amateur stations on earth can contact each other through VHF/UHF crossband repeater on board the International Space Station. It is also used for educational contacts with schools and occasionally amateur radio operators on earth get opportunity to talk directly to the astronauts on board the space station. Now something much beyond that is underway with the planned Lunar Gateway. Lunar Gateway will be built by the participants of the Artemis moon exploration program. Artemis program aims at reestablishing human presence on the Moon more than half a century after the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Participants are the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, European Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Canadian Space Agency and Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre. It is proposed as the first space station beyond the International Space Station which is in a Low Earth Orbit.  The Lunar Gateway will be deployed in a near-rectilinear halo orbit or NRHO around the Moon. At its nearest approach it will be about 1500 km from the Lunar North pole and the farthest location will be 70000 km over the Lunar South pole. The advantage of near-rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon is minimal amount of communication blackout with the Earth.

In a post on Twitter or X, ARISS team announced AREx as their initiative focused on Lunar communications in the Artemis era. They are planning to integrate the Lunar Gateway to continue student science in space via Ham Radio as they are doing with Amateur Radio on International Space Station. For Lunar Gateway, they will focus on frequencies of 2 GHz through 10.5 GHz. That is the current uplink and downlink frequencies of Qatar Oscar 100 Geostationary Amateur Radio satellite which has a range from Brazil to Thailand, though North America is out of range. Global amateur radio community is eagerly waiting for updates from AREx initiative.