NASA Announces Crew Members for Artemis III Mission to Test New Lunar Landers: Here's What We Know

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Tuesday (local time) named the four astronauts it plans to send to the Artemis III mission, the next step in its program to return to the moon.

Meet the crew of the Artemis III mission

The four astronauts selected for the mission are Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas. The mission, planned for next year, will put a crew into Earth orbit to test at least one of the commercially developed lunar landers expected to carry NASA astronauts to the moon’s surface in 2028, NBC News reported Tuesday (local time).

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Bresnik will lead the mission as commander, while Parmitano, an astronaut from the European Space Agency, will serve as pilot. Rubio and Douglas have been named mission specialists, and NASA astronaut Bob Hines will train as a backup crew member.

SpaceX, Blue Origin compete to build landing modules

Billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are racing to produce landing modules to test the Artemis III mission. In an update shared Tuesday, both companies said they expect their landers to be ready by then.

According to NASA, Blue Origin is developing a lunar version of the company’s Blue Moon manned lander, while SpaceX is developing a manned version of the company’s spacecraft. Both companies are creating test cells for Artemis III. NASA supports both lander providers throughout the design, development, test and evaluation process, including sharing agency expertise and capabilities gained from previous missions.

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Artemis III mission to last two weeks: NASA

Jeremy Parsons, NASA’s Artemis program manager, said: “This test flight will allow us to demonstrate that we are capable of conducting highly choreographed operations with our partners across hardware interfaces, software propulsion systems and crewed life support elements in a high-stakes space environment.”

The Artemis III mission is expected to last about two weeks, Parsons said, which is about four days longer than the Artemis II mission around the moon that took place earlier in April. The mission is expected to serve as the final test flight in NASA’s Artemis program. If the mission achieves its goals, the agency plans to follow it up with Artemis IV, which is designed to return astronauts to the lunar surface.

Here’s what we know about the Artemis III mission

Parsons also said that every aspect of this mission will give NASA insight into how to refine its plans for Artemis IV. He added: “This mission is deliberately designed to take calculated risks so that future crews will be safer and ultimately successful when we put our boots on the lunar surface.”

The program also aims to ensure a permanent human presence on the Moon. The space agency has announced that it plans to spend about $20 billion this year to build a base on the lunar surface.

The space agency originally planned the Artemis III mission to land astronauts on the moon, but NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman revamped the program this year to add missions and increase the pace of launches before a lunar landing attempt.

For the Artemis III mission, NASA intends to use the same launch configuration planned for Artemis II. The newly announced crew will travel aboard the Orion spacecraft, which will launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida atop the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.