NASA Names Artemis III Crew for a 2027 Earth-Orbit Rehearsal With Two Moon Landers

NASA's Artemis III will not land on the Moon: four astronauts will fly to low Earth orbit in summer 2027 to practise docking with prototype landers from Blue Origin and SpaceX, paving the way for an Artemis IV landing in 2028.

NASA has set out more details of Artemis III, the next crewed mission in its Moon programme, which the BBC reports is due to launch in the summer of 2027. Despite its place in the Artemis sequence, the mission will not head to the Moon. NASA says four crew members aboard the Orion spacecraft will instead carry out objectives in low Earth orbit to demonstrate critical systems needed for future lunar landings, beginning with Artemis IV, which is currently scheduled for 2028 and would put astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

According to the BBC, the crew will be commander Randy Bresnik, pilot Luca Parmitano of the Italian Space Agency, and mission specialists Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio, with Bob Heintz as backup. The plan involves three launches, three spacecraft and two dockings over about 14 days, extendable to 17. Blue Origin's New Glenn will first lift its uncrewed Blue Moon prototype lander into orbit; Orion will follow on NASA's Space Launch System and dock with it on flight day three, after which the crew will enter the lander for two days of systems checks. Around day six, SpaceX's Starship upper stage will launch as a second prototype lander, and Orion will dock with it for roughly two hours without the crew entering. The return will test an upgraded heat shield.

The BBC reports that NASA changed the mission's goal in February 2026 because the Starship lander is not ready and the in-orbit refuelling it relies on has never been demonstrated; a March 2026 US Government Accountability Office report found SpaceX had made limited progress on that technology. The BBC adds that Blue Origin's only launch pad at Cape Canaveral was seriously damaged when a rocket exploded during an engine test on 28 May 2026, and that NASA says it expects the pad to be ready by December or January 2027. Many in the field, the BBC notes, doubt that the 2028 landing timetable can be met.