NASA assigns crew for Artemis III, sets aggressive timeline for flying it

The US space agency unveiled the crew for its Artemis III mission on Tuesday during an enthusiastic event at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

For this spaceflight into low-Earth orbit, which will see the Orion spacecraft rendezvous and dock with lunar lander prototypes, NASA chose an experienced, all-male crew with military backgrounds. They were revealed inside a darkened Teague Auditorium where hundreds of friends, family members, and NASA employees cheered enthusiastically.

The four crew members are:

• NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, commander
• ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano, pilot
• NASA astronaut Andre Douglas, mission specialist
• NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, mission specialist

The Artemis III test flight will serve as a bridge between the recent Artemis II lunar flyby mission, which was successfully completed in April, and a planned lunar landing with the Artemis IV mission.

“We are the unifying link between Artemis II and Artemis IV,” Bresnik said Tuesday.

Reducing risks for lunar landings

NASA added this low-Earth orbit Artemis mission several months ago after new Administrator Jared Isaacman decided the agency needed to “buy down risk” before putting humans on the Moon. And that is the goal with Artemis III, an approximately two-week mission due to launch no earlier than summer 2027.

Space agency officials outlined plans for the flight on Tuesday, which will include three separate launches and nominally two dockings in low-Earth orbit.

The first launch will be a Blue Origin “lander test vehicle” that will have the capability to loiter in orbit for up to 90 days. Then the four Artemis III astronauts will launch inside the Orion spacecraft on top of a Space Launch System rocket. The crew will subsequently rendezvous with the Blue Moon lander, dock, and enter the Blue Origin vehicle. On board the crew will test out the life support systems on Blue Moon and perform other functions. Orion will control the combined vehicles in flight.

Around this time the third launch will occur of SpaceX’s Starship rocket. This will send a Starship—which is unlikely to be modified with more than a docking adapter—into orbit. After the Artemis crew undocks with Blue Moon they will then rendezvous and dock with the Starship vehicle. However, this vehicle will not include life support equipment, and therefore the crew will not enter Starship.

Following all of this, the Artemis III crew will undock from Starship and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. If successful the mission will have demonstrated the ability of Orion to perform proximity operations with the two lunar landers, test flying in a “stack,” and provide NASA some comfort about the complicated maneuvers that will be needed during Artemis IV, when a crew will dock with a lunar lander, go to the Moon, and then return to Earth in Orion.

“Artemis III will be an extraordinary demonstration of what is possible,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during the crew announcement event.

An aggressive timeline

After the four astronauts were revealed, Isaacman spoke with reporters for a few minutes. He reiterated he is “extremely” confident in the timeline for a 2027 Artemis III launch, as well as a 2028 lunar landing. Americans, he said, should expect excellence from their space agency.

However these timelines have generally been regarded as aggressive by space industry experts, who are more accustomed to NASA moving at a lumbering pace. The prospect of flying Artemis III next year was further clouded by the May 28 explosion of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket at the vehicle’s only launch pad in Florida, causing catastrophic damage to the facilities there.

The New Glenn rocket is optimized to launch the Blue Moon landers under development by Blue Origin. The space company founded by Jeff Bezos has said it expects to return New Glenn to flight before the end of this year, but most experts have told Ars the timeline is more likely to be 12 to 18 months.

During the crew announcement event, NASA officials stressed that they expected New Glenn to be ready next year to launch Blue Moon for the Artemis III mission and continue building up capabilities (including a larger and more powerful variant of the New Glenn rocket) needed to support a lunar landing.

What if the landers are not ready?

NASA faces significant challenges to bring about the Artemis III mission next year and to complete a series of test objectives involving the interaction between Orion and the two lunar lander prototypes.

So what happens if the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft are ready next summer, but one or both of the landers is not?

Isaacman said they would not launch Artemis III until they are ready to fly a meaningful mission.

“I would say, at a very high level, we’re not going to launch this mission until we feel like the objectives that are outlined are sufficient to bring down the risk for a follow-on landing to the Moon itself,” Isaacman said.