The Light Bridges operated telescope captured images of NASA’s Orion Spacecraft using the FERVOR-M instrument
In the early hours of April 3, 2026, between 04:27 and 04:29 UTC, the Two-meter Twin Telescope (TTT)—operated by Light Bridges at the Teide Observatory (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Tenerife, Spain)—successfully captured images of NASA’s Orion spacecraft during the Artemis II mission. The observation took place during its transit through cislunar space, just hours after the trans-lunar injection maneuver. At the time of observation, the spacecraft was approximately 65,000 km from Earth, traveling at a speed of 10,800 km/h (~3 km/s) with a visual magnitude of V = 11.5. While within reach of small and medium-sized telescopes, its rapid angular motion necessitated the high-precision tracking system of the TTT3 robotic two-meter telescope.
Artemis II is the first crewed mission of NASA’s Artemis program. With a crew of four astronauts aboard the Orion capsule, the mission follows a free-return lunar flyby trajectory, reaching a maximum distance of approximately 10,000 km from the Moon as a precursor to the lunar landings planned for subsequent missions.
While within reach of small and medium-sized telescopes, the Orion spacecraft rapid angular motion necessitated the high-precision tracking system of the TTT3 robotic two-meter telescope
The observation was conducted using the FERVOR-M instrument—a high-sensitivity, high-cadence sCMOS scientific camera—mounted on one of the TTT3’s Nasmyth foci, utilizing a sequence of 200 exposures of 0.4 seconds each. The TTT3 is a 2-meter aperture Ritchey-Chrétien telescope that operates fully robotically and autonomously. It is managed by the ROBOTQOP (ROBOtic Telescope Queue OPtimization) intelligent system developed by Light Bridges.
This observation demonstrates the unique capability of the TTT telescopes to detect and track man-made objects in cislunar space—the region between Earth and the Moon—a space domain of increasing strategic, scientific, and economic importance. The TTT system combines high slewing speeds (>10°/s), sub-arcsecond astrometric precision, and stable millimagnitude-level photometry. This makes it a world-class infrastructure for tracking artificial objects, including satellites, spacecraft, and space debris, as well as for cislunar domain awareness and planetary defense.
