Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Andre Douglas, and Frank Rubio are assigned to a low Earth orbit mission in 2027 meant to validate Blue Origin's Blue Moon and SpaceX's Starship landers before Artemis IV attempts a 2028 South Pole landing.
The four astronauts NASA named for Artemis III on Tuesday will spend their mission in orbit roughly 250 miles above Earth, not on the lunar surface. The crew's job, when they launch in 2027, is to test whether two private lunar landers work well enough to trust on a future flight. The Moon itself is now Artemis IV's problem.
That re-scoping is the most consequential detail in NASA's Artemis III crew announcement, and the one most likely to be lost in the coverage. For more than a decade Artemis III has been publicly described as the mission that would return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. As of Tuesday's announcement, it is a roughly two-week low Earth orbit test flight whose primary objective is to demonstrate that the Orion crew capsule can rendezvous and dock with test articles from Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander and SpaceX's Starship lander in sequence.
The crew, per the NASA release: Randy Bresnik, a NASA astronaut on his third spaceflight, as commander; Luca Parmitano of ESA, also on his third, as pilot; Andre Douglas, a NASA astronaut on his first spaceflight and a previous Artemis II backup, as mission specialist; and Frank Rubio, a NASA astronaut who holds the American single-mission endurance record at 371 days from his 2022 to 2023 stay aboard the International Space Station after the Soyuz MS-22 coolant leak, as mission specialist. Bob Hines is the named backup. The four prime crew were also confirmed in NASA's image article for the announcement.
Parmitano's seat is a first. He is the first ESA astronaut assigned to an Artemis mission. ESA's European Service Module, built by the agency and its industrial partners, continues to power Orion. In a prepared statement included in the release, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher framed the assignment as a milestone for European astronauts and as evidence of Europe's central role in the program. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, in the same release, positioned Artemis III as the step between Artemis II's April 2026 crewed lunar flyby and the 2028 South Pole landing planned for Artemis IV.
The mission profile, as NASA described it Tuesday, runs like this. The Space Launch System lifts Orion and the crew from Kennedy Space Center. Blue Origin's Blue Moon pathfinder launches first and waits in a parking orbit. Orion catches up roughly two days later and docks for tests, including the crew entering the lander. Orion undocks, then SpaceX's Starship pathfinder lifts off and Orion docks with it for about a day of checkouts. Then Orion comes home to a Pacific splashdown. The two landers stay where they are, having served as docking targets.
That sequence is the actual test. Neither Blue Origin's Blue Moon hardware nor SpaceX's Starship has yet flown with crew, and the pathfinder variants are themselves unproven in space. A successful Artemis III means NASA has at least two independent ways to put a crew near the lunar surface, which is the redundancy the program has wanted since it contracted with both companies under the Human Landing System program.
The ground story is moving on a similar schedule. According to the release, Orion's crew module and service module connection is set for this summer, SLS engine section integration is underway with RS-25 installation also planned for the summer, all solid rocket booster segments are at Kennedy, mobile launcher refurbishment is on track, and rocket stacking begins this summer. NASA is also designing a spacer to replace the upper stage on Artemis III, an acknowledgement that the Exploration Upper Stage will not be ready in time.
The schedule remains NASA's schedule. The 2027 launch and 2028 Artemis IV landing are agency targets, not independent confirmations, and the program has a documented history of slipping past its own dates. Neither Blue Origin nor SpaceX has yet put a crew on a Starship or Blue Moon, and a single failed test in the next 18 months would push the architecture back again.
What to watch next: whether Blue Moon's first pathfinder launch survives its own test campaign, whether Starship's orbital refueling demonstration is complete before Artemis III flies, and whether the Exploration Upper Stage makes it onto Artemis IV or slips into Artemis V. The crew is set. The mission they are actually flying is smaller than the one they were picked for, and the mission that returns humans to the Moon still belongs to a different crew.