NASA has named the four astronauts who will fly its Artemis III mission and laid out a reshaped plan for the flight, describing it as a crewed test in Earth's orbit that will help pave the way back to the lunar surface. The agency framed the announcement as a major step in returning humans to the Moon and building a lasting presence there, while openly casting the effort as a race to get there before China.
The prime crew is led by commander Randy Bresnik, a two-time astronaut and former space station commander, who is a Marine Corps colonel and test pilot with more than 7,000 flight hours. The pilot is Luca Parmitano, an astronaut with the European Space Agency, a two-time flyer and the first Italian to command the International Space Station, who is also an Italian Air Force colonel and test pilot. They are joined by two mission specialists, Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas.
Frank Rubio is a US Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot and family medicine physician, a colonel and a record-setting astronaut. Andre Douglas, a test engineer and Coast Guard Reserve commander, will be making his first spaceflight. NASA also named a backup crew member, Bob Hines, a test pilot and Air Force colonel who previously flew as a SpaceX Crew-4 pilot. Officials said Bob Hines has logged 170 days in space across two station expeditions and could step into any role on the mission.
The four astronauts will spend roughly the next year training. NASA said they will implement the lessons learned from the previous crew and help develop the landers and operational procedures that future Artemis missions will depend on. A training cabin has already been set up, and the astronauts are actively working through that preparation.
The announcement builds directly on Artemis II, which NASA hailed as an outstanding success. That crew, Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, were the first to launch on the SLS rocket and test the Orion spacecraft, flying around the Moon and returning safely. NASA said that mission would now pass the torch to Artemis III, much as the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo crews handed knowledge to those who followed.
In a notable shift, officials described Artemis III as a test flight added before the first crewed Moon landing, to be carried out in Earth's orbit. It will be the first crewed Artemis mission to use commercial spacecraft, and is designed to prove that NASA and its partners can run highly choreographed operations together, across hardware, software, propulsion and life support systems, with a crew on board in the high-stakes environment of space.
The flight is shaping up as a complex multi-launch campaign. Officials said a Blue Origin lander test article would launch first and can loiter in space for up to about 90 days, before the crew of four launches in Orion on the SLS rocket from Kennedy Space Center. Orion would rendezvous and dock with the Blue Origin lander for about two days of joint operations, with the crew crossing the hatch to operate the lander and test life support, before later docking with SpaceX's Starship lander. The mission is expected to last around two weeks and end with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Much of the plan depends on commercial partners, and NASA acknowledged questions about how a recent Blue Origin anomaly might affect it, while saying it remained confident and was stepping in with its own expertise. The Orion crew module and its European-built service module are due to be integrated this summer, including a new docking system flying for the first time on Artemis III. NASA tied the whole effort to international and commercial collaboration and to ensuring the United States beats China back to the Moon, with readiness targeted for no earlier than this time next year.