NASA has announced the Artemis III crew. Here's what we know about the next stage in America's return to the Moon

NASA announced the crew of four astronauts that will make up the Artemis III mission on 9 June 2026.

The announcement was made from Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA, where NASA also gave an update on the details of Artemis III.

Here, we reveal the crew of Artemis III and highlights of their spaceflight careers so far.

Commander – NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik

• May 2004: Selected as an astronaut by NASA.
• February 2006: Completed Astronaut Candidate Training
• November 2009: Completed first spaceflight on STS-129, a Space Shuttle Atlantis mission to the International Space Station
• 2009–2011: Assigned as support astronaut on Space Shuttle Closeout Crew, tasked with strapping in the crew and sealing the access hatch. Served as Lead Astronaut on closeout crew for the final Shuttle Mission, STS-135.
• 2010: Trained as a 'Cave-a-naut' in Sardinia, Italy, for the European Space Agency’s CAVES program.
• 2012–2015: Served as Lead Astronaut for NASA’s partnership with SpaceX in the design and development of the Dragon Capsule
• September 2014: Served as Commander of the NEEMO 19 team of Aquanauts.
• Most recently: Served as the Assistant-to-the-Chief of the Astronaut Office for Exploration

Pilot – ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano

• May 2009: Selected as an ESA astronaut.
• February 2011: Assigned as a flight engineer to Italian space agency ASI's first long-duration mission on the International Space Station.
• 28 May 2013: Launched on a Soyuz launcher from Baikonur, Kazakhstan for his Volare mission.
• 11 November 2013: Landed back on Earth after 166 days in space. During the mission, conducted over 20 experiments, participated in two spacewalks and assisted with the docking of four spacecraft.
• 13 January 2017: Served as the lead EVA communicator during fellow ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet’s first spacewalk on the Proxima mission, which lasted 5 hours and 58 minutes.
• 20 July 2019: Launched for his second mission 'Beyond' to the ISS in the Russian Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft
• 6 February 2020: Returned to Earth, concluding a 201-day mission that included four spacewalks

Mission Specialist – NASA astronaut Andre Douglas

• 2015: Joined the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Supported the fault management team during the development of NASA's DART planetary defence mission. Worked on MEGANE, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer instrument for JAXA’s Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) spacecraft.
• December 2021: Selected as a NASA astronaut candidate.
• January 2022: Reported for duty to begin two years of initial astronaut training.
• July 2024: Announced by NASA as official backup crew member for the Artemis II test flight.
• 2024–2026: Trained alongside the Artemis II crew

Mission Specialist – NASA astronaut Frank Rubio

• June 2017: Selected by NASA as a member of the 22nd Astronaut Candidate Class.
• 2019: Graduated from two-year astronaut candidate training.
• 21 September 2022: Launched alongside cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin of Roscosmos on Soyuz MS-22 to the International Space Station.
• 27 September 2023: Landed safely back on Earth, breaking the record for the longest single duration spaceflight by a US astronaut with a mission duration of 371 days.
• 2024–2025: Served as the Class Advisor for the NASA Astronaut Candidate Class of 2025.

NASA astronaut Bob Hines was named as a backup crew member for Artemis III.

Artemis III – the key points we know so far

Artemis III (scheduled for 2027) will be a crewed flight in Earth orbit to demonstrate rendezvous and docking capabilities between NASA’s Orion spacecraft and two commercial Moon landers.

These manoeuvres will rehearse the procedures needed for Artemis IV (scheduled for 2028), which will take a crew to the Moon's surface.

The mission involves a single launch campaign coordinating multiple spacecraft, integrating commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin into Artemis operations for the first time.

The crew will demonstrate docking procedures with the SpaceX and Blue Origin landers, and some of the crew may even enter one of docked spacecraft to test future surface mission procedures.

The four-person crew will spend more time in space and inside the Orion spacecraft than the Artemis II crew did, allowing NASA to further evaluate Orion's life support systems.

Unlike Artemis II, which used a traditional propulsive upper stage, Artemis III will use a non-propulsive 'spacer' – a structural stand-in mimicking the mass and dimensions of an actual upper stage, currently being built in Alabama.

Because of the spacer, Orion’s own European-built service module will handle the heavy lifting to transport the spacecraft and crew into Earth orbit.

For the return journey, Artemis III could debut an upgraded heat shield on the Orion capsule to handle extreme re-entry heat and allow for more flexible and robust future re-entry profiles.

What do you think about Artemis III? Are you excited for the next mission in the Artemis programme? Let us know by emailing contactus@skyatnightmagazine.com