NASA Selects Artemis III Crew to Test Lunar Landers Ahead of 2028 Moon Landing
NASA announced the four-member Artemis III crew, who will test lunar lander rendezvous and docking operations ahead of the 2028 moon landing attempt. The mission faces uncertainty as Blue Origin recovers from a launch pad explosion and SpaceX continues developing its lander system. Space medicine experts note that deeper missions will require astronauts to manage medical care independently without Earth support.
NASA named four astronauts to the crew of the Artemis III mission on Tuesday, kicking off more than a year of mission-specific training ahead of a test flight designed to validate lunar lander operations before the first crewed moon landing attempt in 2028. The crew will launch aboard an Orion capsule atop NASA's Space Launch System rocket to test rendezvous and docking procedures with lunar landers being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the crew members at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Commander Randy Bresnik, a former International Space Station commander and test pilot with more than 7,000 flight hours, will lead the mission. Pilot Luca Parmitano, an astronaut with the European Space Agency and former Italian commander of the space station, will fly alongside him. Mission specialist Frank Rubio, an Army Black Hawk helicopter pilot and family-medicine physician, and mission specialist Andre Douglas, a test engineer and Coast Guard reserve commander making his first space flight, round out the crew. Bob Hines was named the backup crew member.
The Artemis III crew will carry out a mission similar to NASA's Apollo 9 flight in March 1969, when three astronauts tested the lunar excursion module in Earth orbit. That flight followed the successful Apollo 8 lunar orbit mission. As of now, Artemis III is the only test flight NASA is planning before making a landing attempt in 2028 with whichever lunar lander is available. By that point, one or both companies will have had to complete a successful unpiloted moon landing.
Blue Origin continues to recover from a catastrophic launch pad explosion on May 28 that destroyed a New Glenn rocket and caused major damage to the company's only launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The company says it expects to return to flight before the end of the year, but whether the New Glenn rocket and pad will be back in operation in time to launch a flight-ready Blue Moon Mark II lander for Artemis III remains to be seen. SpaceX has had its own challenges perfecting the huge Super Heavy-Starship rocket needed to launch that company's lander.
The Artemis program is intended to get astronauts back to the moon by the end of 2028. NASA is planning to launch a series of robotic landers and lunar satellites along with the Artemis IV and V missions, followed by two astronaut landings per year thereafter, setting the stage for construction of a moon base near the lunar south pole beginning in the 2029-2030 timeframe. The south polar region is an attractive target because of permanently shadowed, ultra-cold craters expected to harbor comet-borne ice deposits, providing an in situ source of water, air and rocket fuel.
Artemis II, which successfully sent astronauts on a flight around the moon in April, served as a systems test of the life support and engineering capabilities needed to sustain a human crew, and those systems performed as expected or better. Looking ahead, one of the next major questions is how the Human Landing System vehicles being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin will perform and ensure crew safety on the lunar surface.
A physician specializing in space medicine noted that long-duration missions far from Earth significantly complicate medical care, with risk increasing accordingly. In low Earth orbit, astronauts have continuous support from mission control with options for resupply or medical evacuation, but beyond that those safety nets disappear. Crews traveling to the moon or Mars will need to operate with far greater independence and limited resources. A key concept is Earth-independent medical operations, or EIMO, representing a shift in decision-making from ground-based flight surgeons to the crew.
Spaceflight affects both the cardiovascular system and immune response, with changes in blood volume and immune suppression documented, though long-term clinical implications remain unclear. Radiation exposure is substantially higher outside Earth's atmosphere, increasing cancer risk for astronauts. Spaceflight can also affect vision through spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS), where changes in the retina can lead to gradually worsening eyesight over time. Many solutions developed for spaceflight translate directly to resource-limited environments on Earth, including rural communities, remote research stations and disaster zones.