About 40 minutes from Canberra’s CBD, up a remote road surrounded by ridges, a group of space trackers will from Monday night help return man to the moon. 

NASA’s Artemis 1 mission is scheduled to launch just after 10.30pm Australian time and is the first of three in the Artemis program aimed at putting a human on the moon in the middle of this decade.

An uncrewed spacecraft will take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre at Florida in the US for a 42-day mission to travel to and orbit the moon, before it returns to Earth, landing in the Pacific Ocean on October 10.

NASA’s Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, which is run by Australia’s national science agency CSIRO, will be along for the whole ride – providing 24/7 coverage of the mission with its sister deep space stations in the US and Spain.

The communication complex will receive the acquisition of signal from the Orion spacecraft shortly after is separates from the launch vehicle – about 50 minutes after take-off in Florida, according to the CSIRO.

The team at the Canberra complex collectively has centuries of space tracking experience between them, the agency said.

Their expertise will be key to the mission’s success and equipment upgrades including to large antennas at the complex have been a crucial part of NASA’s preparation for the Artemis program.

The mission will have several important moments, including when a small fleet of “cubesats” or miniature satellites is deployed. 

The Canberra team will also help with that element of the mission through tracking and communications.