Today, 9 June 2026 at 11:30 EDT (15:30 UTC), NASA will announce the crew for the upcoming Artemis III mission.
The agency says it will provide an update on Artemis III and also announce the astronauts who will be assigned to the mission.
The announcement is due to be made live from Johnson Space Center in Houston and you can watch via the embed below.
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.
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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
