During their Saturday Hamvention forum presentation, ARISS: Celebrating 25 Years on ISS and Pioneering New Spaceflight Opportunities for Hams and Youth, ARISS announced the formation of Amateur Radio Exploration (AREx) and their relationship with NASA that could potentially put an amateur radio presence on the Moon as part of future Lunar missions. AREx is a joint consortium between AMSAT and ARISS.

While nothing is set in stone at this stage, ARISS did speculate on the type of radio setup that could empower amateur radio operators to communicate via the Moon:

• A project titled CAVIAR: Communications, Audio, Video, and imaging using Amateur Radio
• Cameras for earth, moon, and vehicle imaging
• Voice, digital, and video supported
• 10GHz and 5GHz links supported by ground station network
• Scalable: change power output and supply for mission profile

Keep an eye on the ARISS website and their other channels for details.

Source: ARISS