The crew of NASA’s next Artemis moon program mission was announced Tuesday, setting the stage for a flight to Earth orbit next year to test rendezvous and docking procedures with moon landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin, a critical milestone before sending astronauts back to the moon for landing in 2028.
The Artemis 3 mission will be commanded by Randy “Komrade” Bresnik, 58, a former Marine fighter pilot and “TOPGUN” graduate who logged 149 days in space during a space shuttle flight in 2009 and a long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station in 2017.
Joining him will be pilot Luca Parmitano, 49, a European Space Agency astronaut and veteran of two long-duration stays aboard the space station; Andres Douglas, 40, a space rookie and backup crew member for the recently completed Artemis 2 around-the-moon mission; and Frank Rubio, 49, who spent a U.S.-record 371 days in space aboard the ISS in 2022-23.
“We are doing flight tests on every single flight, incrementally determining the flight envelope, expanding it, proving out capabilities and making the operational procedures that we have more and more precise,” Bresnik told a crowd of supporters at the Johnson Space Center. “Because every single mission we will do after this will be more challenging and more complex.
“We are certainly humbled as a crew,” he continued, being that unifying link between the phenomenal Artemis 2 mission we just had two months ago and the Artemis IV mission that will follow ours, where we will again … land humans on another celestial body.”
Toward the end of the ceremony, Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman passed a symbolic baton to Bresnik, a handoff from one crew to the next in NASA’s drive to return astronauts to the surface of the moon.
“Randy, in your comments, I really loved when you said that you all are the link from (Artemis) 2 to the surface, and that really resonated with me,” Wiseman said. “And you guys know, we’ve been carrying these batons around for way too long. So with that, the Artemis 2 crew, Komrade, hands you the baton. You’ve got the controls.”
Launching atop a Space Launch System rocket in an Orion capsule, the Bresnik’s crew will practice chasing down one moon lander at a time to make sure rendezvous and docking procedures work as planned before committing to an astronaut moon landing when those procedures will have to be carried out in lunar orbit.
The flight will pose a major test for mission managers and engineers with NASA, SpaceX and Blue Origin, who will have to launch multiple heavy-lift rockets in a matter of days and then coordinate their flights in a multi-vehicle sequence of tightly scripted maneuvers.
“This test flight will enable us to prove we can carry out highly choreographed operations with our (commercial) partners across hardware interfaces, software, propulsion systems and life support elements with crew in the high stakes space environment,” said Jeremy Parsons, a senior manager in NASA’s “Moon to Mars” program office.
“Are we able to launch in sequence with our partners across multiple launch pads and meet up at precise points in space? How do our spacecraft, designed and built across NASA and different partners, operate together in an integrated way in an unforgiving environment?”
He said “every aspect” of the Artemis 3 mission “will give us insight into how to refine our plans for Artemis IV and beyond, and buy down risk.”
The Artemis 3 crew announcement comes as Blue Origin continues to recover from a catastrophic launch pad explosion May 28 that destroyed a New Glenn rocket like the one that will be needed to carry the company’s Blue Moon Mark 2 lander into Earth orbit next year. The company’s only operational launch pad, located at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, suffered major damage.
The Jeff Bezos-owned company says it expects to return to flight before the end of the year, but the mishap threw a wrench into the New Glenn launch schedule, delaying flights of the Blue Moon Mark I, an uncrewed lunar cargo ship intended to help pave the way for the larger, more capable piloted version.
Whether the New Glenn rocket and pad 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will be back in operation in time to launch a flight-ready Mark 2 lander in time for Artemis 3 remains to be seen.
SpaceX has had its own problems perfecting the huge Super Heavy-Starship rocket needed to launch that company’s lander. SpaceX is equipping a Starship upper stage with a docking mechanism for the Artemis 3 flight, but the vehicle will not be an operational lander. It’s not yet known when the Elon Musk-owned company will have an Artemis lander ready for flight tests.
The Artemis program is intended to get astronauts back to the moon by the end of 2028, well ahead of Chinese “taikonauts” and their long-standing goal of walking on the moon by the end of the decade.
Even though NASA sent 12 astronauts to the moon’s surface between 1969 and the end of 1972, winning the Cold War space race with the former Soviet Union, the agency wants to establish a near permanent presence on the moon with the Artemis program, maintaining its position as the world leader in space travel, research and technology.
NASA is planning to launch a series of robotic landers and lunar satellites along with the Artemis IV and V missions followed by two astronaut landings per year thereafter. That will set the stage for construction of a moon base near the lunar south pole beginning in the 2029-2030 timeframe.
The south polar region is an attractive target because of permanently shadowed, ultra cold craters thought to harbor ice deposits, providing an in situ source of water, air and rocket fuel. With habitats in place, along with solar and nuclear power stations, rotating astronaut crews could live and work on the moon for long durations much like space station fliers have done in Earth orbit for the past quarter century.
But there are multiple threats to the Artemis schedule, including the readiness of the required rockets and landers that could push Artemis 3 into 2028. Whether any additional piloted test flights might be needed between the Artemis 3 mission and a moon landing remains to be seen, but NASA managers said Tuesday they were optimistic Artemis 3 will be able to launch as planned in 2027.
The Artemis 3 mission will be similar in some respects to NASA’s Apollo 9 flight in March 1969 when three astronauts tested the spindly lunar excursion module in Earth orbit after a successful lunar orbit mission, Apollo 8, at the end of 1968. The Apollo 10 crew then tested the lunar module in orbit around the moon before Apollo 11 finally landed in the Sea of Tranquility in July 1969.
The Artemis program’s version of Apollo 8, sending Artemis 2 commander Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a flight around the moon, was successfully completed in April.
As of now, Artemis 3 is the only test flight with astronauts on board that NASA is planning before making a landing attempt in 2028 with whichever lunar lander is available. However it plays out, NASA is requiring a successful unpiloted lander touchdown on the moon before the Artemis 4 mission will proceed.