NASA Announces Crew Members of Artemis III Mission

On June 9th, 2026, NASA announced its four selected crew members for the 2027 Artemis III Mission: the journey that will set the stage for a future [landing] on the moon.

The Artemis III commander will be Randy Bresnik, and the pilot will be Luca Parmitano of Italy. Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas will be acting as mission specialists.

Andre Douglas served as an Artemis II backup crew member, and Artemis III will be his first journey into space. Frank Rubio holds America’s record of the longest consecutive spaceflight of 371 days. Luca Parmitano, the first Italian and third European astronaut to command the ISS, is famous for a spacewalk accident where water filled his helmet. Randy Bresnik has been a NASA astronaut since 2004, and he described Artemis III as “the most important step yet in humanity’s return to the Moon”.

Artemis III will launch the astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft, which will be on top of the giant SLS rocket. It is also planned to stay in low earth orbit, the area close to the earth, instead of landing on the moon. There, it will practice meeting and docking with two Moon landers: SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2. The astronauts will rehearse moving from one spacecraft to another. This isn’t without purpose: “This matters because astronauts on later missions will need to swap from Orion into a lander before heading down to the Moon’s surface,” stated undefined. Artemis III’s goal is to ensure the safety of everything before a real moon landing.

Though Artemis III won’t reach the moon itself, it will be a huge leap in humanity’s return to the lunar surface. After this 2027 mission, Artemis IV is scheduled to actually land on the moon in 2028. Can NASA do it? The answer will be revealed in the launch of Artemis III!