The Artemis 3 crew poses for an official portrait. From left to right: Andre Douglas, Luca Parmitano, Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio. Image: NASA/Bill Stafford.
The crew of NASA’s next Artemis moon program mission was announced Tuesday, setting the stage for a flight to Earth orbit next year to test rendezvous and docking procedures with moon landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin, a critical milestone before sending astronauts back to the moon for landing in 2028.
The Artemis 3 mission will be commanded by Randy “Komrade” Bresnik, 58, a former Marine fighter pilot and “TOPGUN” graduate who logged 149 days in space during a space shuttle flight in 2009 and a long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station in 2017.
Joining him will be pilot Luca Parmitano, 49, a European Space Agency astronaut and veteran of two long-duration stays aboard the space station; Andres Douglas, 40, a space rookie and backup crew member for the recently completed Artemis 2 around-the-moon mission; and Frank Rubio, 49, who spent a U.S.-record 371 days in space aboard the ISS in 2022-23.
“We are doing flight tests on every single flight, incrementally determining the flight envelope, expanding it, proving out capabilities and making the operational procedures that we have more and more precise,” Bresnik told a crowd of supporters at the Johnson Space Center. “Because every single mission we will do after this will be more challenging and more complex.
