HOUSTON — NASA has named the astronauts who will fly the next Artemis mission, a test flight in low Earth orbit in which the Orion spacecraft will attempt to dock with prototypes of two lunar landers.
During an event at the Johnson Space Center on June 9, NASA announced the crew selected to fly the Artemis 3 mission in mid-2027.
Commanding the mission will be NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, a veteran of one of the final space shuttle missions who later spent nearly five months on the International Space Station. The mission’s pilot is Luca Parmitano, a European Space Agency astronaut who spent two long-duration missions on the ISS in 2013 and 2019-20.
The mission specialists are NASA’s Frank Rubio, who holds the record for the longest American spaceflight at 371 days in 2022-23, and Andre Douglas, a rookie astronaut who was a backup for Artemis 2. Bob Hines, a NASA astronaut who flew a six-month mission on the ISS in 2022, will be the mission’s backup, training with the four prime crew members to be able to replace any of them.
The four will fly what NASA officials have described as one of the most complex crewed missions ever flown, involving a coordinated series of launches along with rendezvous and docking operations.
