NASA Announces the Crew of Artemis 3, Four Astronauts Who Will ‘Take Calculated Risks’ in Low-Earth Orbit and Pave the Way for a Future Moon Landing

The mission, expected to launch next year, will practice meeting and docking with lunar landers developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin

Carlyn Kranking | Associate Web Editor, Science

June 9, 2026 4:53 p.m.

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The next four humans who will climb into an Orion spacecraft and blast off from Earth as part of NASA’s Artemis program have just been revealed.

Expected to launch in 2027, the Artemis 3 mission will spend approximately two weeks orbiting our planet, making scientific observations and testing key procedures that will support a future moon landing. Its all-male crew, NASA officials announced at a press conference on Tuesday, will include mission specialists Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio, pilot Luca Parmitano and commander Randy Bresnik.

“To the Artemis 3 crew,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at the conference, “you carry the fire of exploration from generations past, the confidence of this agency, and the support of this nation, and the dreams of millions.”

Douglas, a Coast Guard reserve commander, will be making his first spaceflight on Artemis 3. Rubio is a family medicine physician and an Army Black Hawk pilot—and he holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by an American, after spending 371 days on the International Space Station from 2022 to 2023. Parmitano, an astronaut from the European Space Agency, is an Italian Air Force colonel and test pilot. Marine Corps Colonel Bresnik is a former commander on an International Space Station mission and a test pilot with more than 7,000 flight hours. Air Force Colonel Bob Hines is the backup crew member and will step into any role on the mission if needed.

Artemis 3 will practice some of the most complicated parts of a lunar landing in hopes of mitigating risk for future moon missions.

“Spaceflight is hard. And that’s why the most important Artemis mission will always be the next Artemis mission,” Bresnik said at the conference. “Every single mission we will do after this will be more challenging and more complex.” Artemis 3 will lay the groundwork for these future steps, acting as a “unifying link,” he said, between the success of Artemis 2 and the highly anticipated return to the moon during Artemis 4.

What to know about Artemis 3

For years, the Artemis 3 mission was expected to be the first to carry humans to the moon’s surface since Apollo 17 in 1972. But after NASA announced a shake-up to its Artemis program in February, this mission became a trip to low-Earth orbit—and the upcoming Artemis 4, slated for no earlier than 2028, became the one that will target a lunar landing. Artemis 3 now mirrors the Apollo 9 mission of 1969, which tested a lunar module while in orbit around Earth, just months before Apollo 11 saw the first humans step onto the moon’s soil.

Artemis 4’s moon-bound astronauts will fly through space in an Orion capsule—just like the Artemis 2 crew did. But once they’re in lunar orbit, they will meet up with a different spacecraft—called a human landing system—built by a private aerospace company. Two members of the crew will climb aboard that lander, which will deliver them to the moon’s surface and back to Orion. Artemis 3 will practice this meetup of spacecraft, known as rendezvous and docking, in a closer-to-home environment.

“It enables us to test in space how we will fly on future missions,” Jeremy Parsons, acting assistant deputy administrator for NASA, said at the conference.

The astronauts will practice docking with two commercially built spacecraft: SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon. First, Orion will dock with Blue Moon, Parsons said, and for roughly two days, astronauts will test life support systems and perform technology demonstrations. Crew members will go inside the lunar lander to conduct some tests. Then, the two spacecraft will detach, and Orion will next dock with Starship for about a day.

In many ways, Parsons said, the mission will be more complex than Artemis 2 was. It will involve not one but three launches—the two landers and Orion—and it will trial rendezvous and docking procedures. “This mission is deliberately designed to take calculated risks so that future crews will be safer and ultimately successful when we put boots on the lunar surface,” Parsons said.

Bumps in the road to the moon

Both SpaceX and Blue Origin have faced delays in the production of their landers. And in late May, a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket exploded during a test, raising questions about whether the company will be ready to go in time for Artemis 3. New Glenn is the vehicle that’s meant to send Blue Moon to space, and the blast unleashed a giant fireball that damaged the only launchpad available for the company’s rocket.

During the press conference, NASA expressed confidence that Blue Origin’s rocket and lander will be prepared for the mission. And John Couluris, senior vice president of lunar permanence, speaking on behalf of the company, echoed that sentiment: “We’ve redoubled our efforts and are moving forward,” he said.

Parsons acknowledged that meeting the agency’s current deadlines will require a massive push across the board. He said NASA engineers are working with industry partners to accelerate timelines and “yank schedules to the left.”

After the event, Isaacman told reporters he is “extremely confident” that the upcoming missions will proceed as planned, per the New York Times’ Katrina Miller. “We’re going to return to the moon before the end of 2028.”

Carlyn Kranking | | Read More

Carlyn Kranking is Smithsonian magazine's associate web editor for science.