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- Construction will start soon on a communications facility in Matjiesfontein that will assist with NASA's Artemis project.
- The Artemis project is aiming to put the first woman and person of colour on the moon by December 2025.
- The communications facility is one of three worldwide.
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In three to four months, construction will begin on a communications facility in Karoo-based Matjiesfontein which will assist in putting the first woman and person of colour on the moon.
This is according to Tiaan Strydom, the business development manager at the South African National Space Agency (Sansa), who said the main focus of the communications facility will be the Artemis 3 project, which aims to be the first crewed mission to land on the moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972.
Sansa has teamed up with NASA for the project to build the lunar exploration ground site (LEGS).
The Matjiesfontein facility will be one of only three communications LEGS antennas around the globe. It will be used to ensure near-continuous connectivity between astronauts on NASA's Artemis spacecraft and those who will subsequently come to work on and around the lunar surface.
The launch of Artemis 3 was initially planned for December 2025, but Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator for exploration systems development, is concerned that SpaceX’s Starship vehicle won't be ready by then, Space.com recently reported.
But this won't stop work on the LEGS in Matjiesfontein, which is set to get under way in three to four months.
Ground was ceremoniously broken on the communications facility in November 2022.
Strydom told News24 that the aim of the LEGS project was to "offload services from the NASA Deep Space Network", which is an international array of giant radio antennae that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions.
"As the number of lunar missions grows, NASA will need new infrastructure that can support Artemis while the Deep Space Network focuses on missions at Mars and farther into the solar system," said Strydom.
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He said:
A ground tracking station outside Johannesburg at Hartebeesthoek played a critical role in NASA's Apollo missions in the 1960s.
Younes said the location, weather, and existing infrastructure made Matjiesfontein the ideal location for the infrastructure.
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The South African Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, which will become the largest scientific instrument in the world when completed, will not be affected by the development of the communication facility, Strydom added. Many of the dishes involved in the SKA project are also based in the Karoo.
Mars
Strydom said the Artemis project would be important for future crewed endeavours, such as the Mars mission.
"The Artemis programme seeks to establish a sustained presence at the moon to test technologies needed for the journey on to Mars."
NASA aims to launch astronauts to Mars by late 2030 or early 2040, according to Space.com.
It has sent five robotic vehicles to Mars over the years but as of yet, no humans have stepped foot on the planet.
Last year, Elon Musk said in a Tweet that 2029 was his guess for the year that humans step on the moon.
