Receiving the Artemis 2 S-Band Carrier With a Wi-Fi Dish and Airspy R2
Thank you to Simone Spadino for writing in and sharing how he received the S-band carrier signal from the Artemis 2 Orion capsule from his home in Italy, using a simple one-meter Wi-Fi grid dish, an Airspy R2, an LNA, a filter, and a downconverter. Simone notes that his results show it is possible to receive the Artemis carrier signal with a small dish.
Artemis 2 may have already returned to Earth safely, but there are future missions planned for 2027 and beyond, so Simone's write-up serves as a great place to get yourself ready to receive those future missions.
Simone's write-up notes that perfect tracking with a rotator wasn't required because the Wi-Fi dish had a beamwidth of about 11°, so he was able to manually orient the dish every 10 minutes using an Android smartphone. On the first night, he achieved a carrier SNR of 5.5dB, and on the second night, 6.5 dB.
Thank you for your great article! I’ll definitively try to track Artemis III next year. Since it’s going to be a LEO mission, a rotor such as the AntRunner or the Discovery Drive might be needed. Or perhaps due to the low orbit, an RHCP omnidirectional antenna could be used instead of a dish.