The 19th The Andy Thomas Space Foundation Forum kicked off this week and our ANU Institute for Space | InSpace Mission Specialist Professor Francis Bennet spoke on a highly anticipated panel about his team’s work with the NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration Artemis II mission.

The Australian National University's Quantum Optical Ground Station achieved a major space capability with a successful optical communication demonstration from the NASA Artemis II mission in April 2026. Designed and built in-house at ANU with cutting edge off-the-shelf components, the modular system brings together a highly complex set of systems to enable high speed communication over the large distance to the Moon. ANU and NASA worked together with a cross-disciplinary team to design, install, test, and operate the system during the mission.

Mission highlights included an impressive 43GB of data downlinked through ANU, with performance data gathered to show the practical application of high speed communication for crewed spaceflight missions to the Moon. ANU continues to develop advanced optical communication systems for lunar and deep-space applications, in addition to quantum and high-speed satellite communication capabilities.