HOUSTON – NASA has named the astronauts who will fly the next Artemis mission, a test flight in low Earth orbit in which the Orion spacecraft will attempt to dock with prototypes of two lunar landers.
During an event at Johnson Space Center on June 9, NASA announced the crew selected to fly the Artemis 3 mission in mid-2027.
The mission will be commanded by NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, a veteran of one of the last space shuttle missions who later spent nearly five months aboard the International Space Station. The mission is piloted by European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, who spent two long-duration missions on the ISS in 2013 and 2019–20.
The mission specialists are NASA’s Frank Rubio, who holds the record for the longest US space flight at 371 days in 2022-23, and Andre Douglas, a novice astronaut who was the backup for Artemis 2. Bob Hines, a NASA astronaut who flew a six-month mission to the ISS in 2022, will be the mission’s backup, training with the four key crew members to be able to replace any of them.
The four will fly what NASA officials have described as one of the most complex crewed missions ever flown, involving a coordinated series of launches along with rendezvous and docking operations.
Jeremy Parsons, who was named Artemis program manager by NASA last month as part of a broader restructuring of the agency, said, “This mission is intentionally designed to take risks so that future crews will be safer and ultimately successful.”
concept of operation
NASA announced in February that Artemis 3, which was to be the first attempted crewed lunar landing, would instead be a test flight involving Orion and lunar landers in Earth orbit, modeled on the Apollo 9 mission. However, the agency has provided few specific details about the mission so far.
In the crew announcement, Parsons explained how Artemis 3, which is scheduled to last two weeks, will unfold. First, Blue Origin will launch a prototype of its Blue Moon Mark 2 lander. That spacecraft will be able to spend 90 days in low Earth orbit.
“This gives us the flexibility to launch our crew of four on Orion and our powerful Space Launch System,” he said. Orion will rendezvous and dock with the Blue Moon lander, spending two days together in dock. This will involve astronauts entering the lander and testing a version of the Artemis lunar spacesuit Axiom Space is under development.
“This gives our teams important information about the systems that lunar lander crews will rely on, in an environment closer to home versus more than four days away around the Moon,” he said.
After Orion undocks from the Blue Moon, it will remain in low Earth orbit and await launch of the SpaceX Starship lunar lander prototype. Orion and the starship will dock and spend a day together. Orion will then depart and prepare to return home while sailing across the Pacific Ocean.
The landers that Orion will dock with are prototypes of landers that will be used for later lunar missions, although none of these will be able to land. The Starship lander, for example, will be a variant of the Starship Version 3 vehicle that made its first test flight on May 22.
NASA Human Landing System Program Manager Steve Creech said in an interview that it would be a model taken “off the line” at SpaceX’s Starbase production facility with modifications such as a docking port, but without a crew cabin or landing system.
He said, “We are not going to enter the crew cabin on that starship.” “This is a huge change that will come later in Starship development.” SpaceX is instead working on a crew cabin for ground testing.
In contrast, the Blue Moon lander will have a crew cabin and life support systems, but without a propulsion system. “They’re going to build a large-scale simulator of the Mark 2 lander coming back from the moon to dock with Orion,” Creech said.
The crew cabin, which the crew will enter, will also be able to test Axiom’s suits, such as the ability to put on and take off the suit in the lander’s cabin.
Both Blue Origin and SpaceX still need to perform uncrewed landings of their vehicles on the Moon before NASA will use them for crewed landings. “The combination of hardware activities and the Artemis test mission covers the coast of the key things we want to demonstrate before Artemis 4,” he said.
Schedule Risk
Creech said he believes both Blue Origin and SpaceX will be ready with their lander prototypes by Artemis 3’s projected launch date in 2027.
“We think it’s possible with these two providers in 2027,” he said. “Requires hardware construction and progress, but I think it’s a really good mission to mitigate a lot of the risks and learn about how to interact with Orion and maintain the momentum of our flights.”
Blue Origin’s ability to launch its Blue Moon lander is a concern after a New Glenn rocket exploded on the launch pad during a static-fire test on May 28. Blue Origin is making “excellent progress” on the probe and pad cleanup, John Koulouris, senior vice president of lunar sustainability at the company, said during the crew announcement event.
While Blue Origin has vowed to resume New Glenn flights by the end of the year, many in the industry are skeptical that the rocket could resume flights before mid-2027, given the work required to rebuild pad infrastructure damaged or destroyed in the explosion.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a Fox Business interview on June 4 that NASA is considering “detaching” the Blue Moon lander from the New Glenn rocket, potentially allowing it to be launched on other vehicles.
“We are considering that option to reduce the risk,” Creech said. A key issue, he said, is that the Blue Moon Mark 2 is designed to launch at New Glenn and its payload fairing is 7 meters in diameter. This is larger than the payload fairings available for other rockets such as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur.
“We’re working very closely with Blue Origin,” Isaacman told reporters after the Crew announcement event. “We’re providing the subject matter expertise, everything we can, to get them back in the business of launching big rockets again.”
It appears that Artemis 3 will refuse to fly if only one of the two landers is ready.
He said, “We are not going to launch this mission until we feel that the objectives that have been stated are sufficient to minimize the risk of a follow-up landing on the Moon.” “As it stands right now, it’s two landers.”
“I would say that NASA is extremely confident about the schedule for Artemis 3 as well as the Artemis 4 landing attempt that will occur in 2028,” he said. “We are going to return to the Moon before the end of 2028.”
