NASA names crew for Artemis 3 mission to test lunar landers

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 the Johnson Space Center on June 9, NASA announced the crew selected to fly the Artemis 3 mission in mid-2027. Commanding the mission will be NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, a veteran of one of the final space shuttle missions who later spent nearly five months on the International Space Station. The mission’s pilot is Luca Parmitano, a European Space Agency astronaut 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 American spaceflight at 371 days in 2022-23, and Andre Douglas, a rookie astronaut who was a backup for Artemis 2. Bob Hines, a NASA astronaut who flew a six-month mission on the ISS in 2022, will be the mission’s backup, training with the four prime 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. “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,” said Jeremy Parsons, who was named Artemis program manager by NASA last month as part of a sweeping reorganization of the agency. Concept of operations NASA announced in February that Artemis 3, once set to be the first crewed lunar landing attempt, would instead be a test flight involving Orion and lunar landers in Earth orbit, modeled on the Apollo 9 mission. The agency, though, had offered few specifics about the mission until now. At the crew announcement, Parsons described how Artemis 3, slated to last two weeks, would 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 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 docked together. That will include astronauts entering the lander and testing a version of the Artemis lunar spacesuit Axiom Space is developing. “This gives our teams key information on systems the lunar lander crew will depend on, in an environment close to home versus four-plus days away around the moon,” he said. After Orion undocks from Blue Moon, it will remain in low Earth orbit and await the launch of a SpaceX Starship lunar lander prototype. Orion and Starship will dock and spend a day together. Orion will then depart and prepare to return home, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. The landers that Orion will dock with are prototypes of those that would later be used for lunar missions, although neither would b…