Giant radio telescope sees Artemis 2 astronauts on Orion flying around the moon. 'There are 4 people in those pixels.'

The U.S. National Science Foundation Green Bank Telescope (NSF GBT) and an image of the Artemis 2 Orion spacecraft taken by the telescope.

(Image credit: Data credit: JPL & NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO. Photo credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/J.Hellerman)

Here's a unique view of NASA's Artemis 2 moon mission.A giant radio telescope in West Virginia tracked Artemis 2's Orion spacecraft around the moon for five days, gathering precise observations on its movements from over 200,000 miles away during the historic mission.Reaching 485 feet (148 meters) up into the sky and weighing 17 million (7.7 million kilograms) pounds, with a dish that covers about 2.3 acres (0.9 hectares), the massive steerable telescope is the largest moving structure on land."With the GBT, we were able to track the movement of the spacecraft within 0.2 millimeters per second of what NASA calculated in its projections," Anthony Remijan, the observatory site director, said in a May 6 statement.

This image of the Orion capsule was created while the spacecraft was over 213k miles (343k km) from Earth. (Image credit: JPL & NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO)"It's like having a speedometer in your car that can track your speed within 0.0004 decimal places per hour," he continued.The observatory released a pixelated image that the telescope captured of Orion while it was over 213,000 miles (343,000 km) from Earth. The vertical axis shows distance to the capsule, which the Artemis 2 crew named "Integrity," with the distance increasing downward."There are four people in those pixels," Will Armentrout, an NSF GBO scientist, said while presenting to colleagues at the NSF GBO.