NASA assigns three Americans, one Italian astronaut to fly on Artemis 3
These four men will orbit Earth to test critical docking maneuvers needed for landing on the Moon during future Artemis missions.
Displaying confidence that the Artemis 3 mission will go forward in 2027, as planned, NASA officials announced the crew assignment for the flight, with a European Space Agency astronaut joining three Americans on the test mission.
Just two months after NASA successfully flew four astronauts around the Moon and back on Artemis 2, the space agency has now announced the crew assigned to the next stage of their plans to return humans to the surface of the Moon.
The Artemis 3 mission crew now consists of NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, who will command the mission, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, who will pilot the Orion spacecraft, and NASA astronauts Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio, who will serve as mission specialists for the flight.
Left to right, Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Frank Rubio, and Andre Douglas, will serve as the Artemis 3 crew. (NASA)
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Randy Bresnik has been a NASA astronaut for 22 years, with two previous trips to space. The first was on the Space Shuttle Atlantis, during STS-129, in 2009, as one of six crew that visited the International Space Station during a 10-day flight. The second was in 2017, when he launched to the ISS on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, spent nearly five months on the orbital lab during Expedition 52/53, and served as the commander of the station for Expedition 53.
Luca Parmitano is from Palermo, Italy, and was selected by the European Space Agency in 2009. He has also made two trips to the International Space Station, first during Expedition 36/37 in 2013, and his second for Expedition 60/61, from July 2019 to February 2020.
Frank Rubio was chosen as a NASA astronaut in 2017, and has flown to space once before. Originally sent to the ISS for Expedition 67/68 in 2022, he and his Soyuz crewmates had to stay longer due to damage to their spacecraft. As a result of his delayed landing, he holds the record for the longest spaceflight by an American, with a total of 371 days in space.
Andre Douglas has been a NASA astronaut since 2022. He was the backup crew member for the Artemis 2 mission, and thus trained alongside Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, ready to take over for any of the NASA astronauts, in the event that they could not make the flight. This will be Douglas' first trip to space.
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Originally planned as the next mission to land on the Moon, Artemis 3 has been scaled back, and is now a test flight involving three simultaneous launches — NASA's SLS blasting off with this crew on board an Orion spacecraft, a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket delivering their Blue Moon lander into orbit, and a specially designed SpaceX Starship lifting off as well.
These three will then rendezvous in low-Earth orbit, where the Orion crew will test out docking maneuvers with the Blue Origin and SpaceX components.
Similar to the Apollo 9 mission from 1969, Artemis 3 will ensure that all the systems of the different spacecraft will work together properly, paving the way for Artemis 4 to become the next mission to touch down on the lunar surface.