Australia will play a key role in humanity's return to the Moon, with Canberra-based communications systems supporting NASA's first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years.

The Artemis II mission, scheduled for April 1, will send four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the Moon, marking the first time humans have ventured that far since the Apollo era in the 1960s and early 1970s.

At Mount Stromlo Observatory, researchers at the ANU will support the mission through a demonstration of their optical communications technology.

Researcher Francis Bennet said ANU's Quantum Optical Ground Station would receive signals from NASA's laser communication terminal on the Orion spacecraft and translate them into usable data.

Francis Bennet shows Katherine Bennell-Pegg ANU technology in the Quantum Optical Ground Station.   (ABC News: Stuart Carnegie)

"We're basically demonstrating our technology and our capability," Professor Bennet said.

"Even though you can't see the lasers with your eyes themselves, we can use the signals, basically the laser winking on and off, to allow us to detect those individual blips and convert that into a communication signal."

He said the technology would both increase the volume of data returned from space and upgrade imagery from historic footage.

"What this changes is the grainy images from the 1960s into high-definition video coming from places like the Moon,"