2026-04-15 04:06 UTC
ohhhh, this is good!
Using the 3.9m AAT, Sarah Caddy and Lee Spitler (from our school!) were able to track Orion on its return trajectory ...
... when the astronauts were still 200,000 km away from Earth! 🤯
That's at a distance of ~16 Earth diameters away, and Orion is a tiny tiny tiny spaceship at such great distances ....
But a big 3.9m telescope is also a handy toy to play with!
via AAL LinkedIn
#ArtemisII #Astrodon #Australia #Telescopes
Replies (4)
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@itgrrl@infosec.exchange 2026-04-15 04:57
@CosmicRami oh, nice work! 👏👏👏 do you know if it was tracked manually or did they calculate a trajectory? 🤔
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@Jkwatson@pdx.social 2026-04-15 05:14
@CosmicRami cool! I used the AAT for my phd research in the mid 90s! I want to go back and visit coonabarrabran someday
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@spacelizard@aus.social 2026-04-15 05:42
@CosmicRami I saw this on AAL FB and was wondering how to re-post it here, now I don't have to!
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@jdoe@freeradical.zone 2026-04-15 15:52
@CosmicRami 5 meters over 200K km = 2.5e-8 radians, or 25 billionths of a radian (or 4 billionths of the circle). That's crazy! 1 billionth is 1/1,000,000,000 😱