teide observatory artemis orion spacecraft images

Teide Observatory Tracks NASA’s Artemis II Orion on Lunar Flyby

Teide Telescope Captures Historic Artemis II Flyby

In the early hours of this Friday, 3 April, the Two-meter Twin Telescope (TTT) operated by Light Bridges at the Teide Observatory (Institute of Astrophysics of the Canaries, Tenerife, Spain) successfully captured images of NASA’s Orion spacecraft from the Artemis II mission. The observation took place between 04:27 and 04:29 UTC, just hours after the spacecraft completed its translunar injection manoeuvre during its transit through cislunar space.

A High-Speed Target in the Night Sky

According to a statement from Light Bridges, at the time of observation the Orion spacecraft was approximately 65,000 km from Earth, travelling at a speed of 10,800 km/h (3 km/s). With a visual magnitude of V = 11.5, it was within reach of small and medium-sized telescopes. However, its rapid angular movement required the high-precision tracking system of the robotic two-metre TTT3 telescope to capture it clearly.

The Pioneering Artemis II Mission

Artemis II is the first crewed mission of NASA’s Artemis programme, carrying a crew of four astronauts aboard the Orion capsule. The spacecraft is executing a free-return trajectory around the Moon, reaching a maximum distance of about 10,000 km from the lunar surface. This mission is a critical precursor to the planned lunar landings in subsequent stages of the programme.

Precision Technology Behind the Images

The observation from the TTT3 telescope was made using the FERVOR-M instrument—a highly sensitive, high-cadence scientific sCMOS camera—installed at one of the TTT3’s Nasmyth foci. The team captured a sequence of 200 exposures, each lasting 0.4 seconds. The TTT3 is a two-metre aperture Ritchey–Chrétien telescope that operates in a fully robotic and autonomous mode. It is managed by the intelligent ROBOTQOP system (ROBOtic Telescope Queue OPtimization), developed by Light Bridges.

Monitoring the Strategic Cislunar Frontier

This observation demonstrates the unique capability of the TTT telescopes to detect and track artificial objects in cislunar space—the region between Earth and the Moon. This is a domain of growing strategic, scientific and economic importance. The TTT system combines a high slew speed (greater than 10 degrees per second), sub-arcsecond astrometric precision, and stable photometry at the millimagnitude level. This makes it a first-class infrastructure for tracking artificial objects, including satellites, spacecraft and space debris, for surveillance of the cislunar domain and for planetary defence.

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