Meet NASA’s Artemis III Astronauts

Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio, Andre Douglas, and Luca Parmitano combined bring thousands of hours of flight experience.

Jack Daleo

Tuesday, June 09, 2026 at 05:25 PM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Zach Vasile

NASA on Tuesday announced the crewmembers for its Artemis III mission (from left): NASA astronaut Andre Douglas, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, and NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik and Frank Rubio. [Credit: NASA/Bill Stafford]

Key Takeaways:

NASA announced the four-person Artemis III crew, who received a symbolic "baton" from the Artemis II crew, signaling the continuation of the agency's lunar exploration program.
Scheduled for no earlier than mid-2027, Artemis III will conduct a crucial two-week mission in low-Earth orbit to test commercial human landing systems (HLS) from SpaceX and Blue Origin.
This mission aims to prove integrated operations, including rendezvous, docking, and testing life support systems inside both landers, serving as a critical precursor to future lunar landings.
Both SpaceX and Blue Origin still face significant development and testing hurdles for their HLS vehicles to be ready for the Artemis III timeline, despite NASA's close oversight.

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On Tuesday, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch—three of the four crewmembers on NASA’s historic Artemis II mission in April—literally passed the baton to the next four astronauts participating in the space agency’s lunar exploration program.

“We’ve been carrying these batons around for way too long,” Wiseman told Randy Bresnik, who NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on Tuesday named the commander of the low-Earth orbit (LEO) Artemis III mission. “You’ve got the controls.”