Artemis 3 commander Randy Bresnik at the June 9 ceremony where NASA announced the crew for that mission. Credit: NASA/John Kraus
HOUSTON — The astronaut named commander of Artemis 3 is confident that his crew will be ready for what NASA has called one of the most complex missions in the agency’s history in just a year.
NASA named veteran astronaut Randy Bresnik as commander of Artemis 3 during a June 9 ceremony at the Johnson Space Center, along with the other three members of the crew: NASA astronauts Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio and ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano.
The four will fly a two-week mission in low Earth orbit on an Orion spacecraft that will include docking with prototypes of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2 and SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander, testing those spacecraft before later crewed lunar landing attempts.
NASA has been planning a mid-2027 launch of Artemis 3, which means the four astronauts will have only about one year to train together before flying what NASA called in a social media post before the crew announcement “one of history’s most complex missions.”
