NASA says Artemis III will send four astronauts on a 14-day flight in 2027 to dock Orion with test versions of Blue Origin's and SpaceX's lunar landers in low Earth orbit, ahead of a planned Moon landing in 2028.
NASA has set out the plan for Artemis III, a mission that will not land on the Moon but will instead fly in Earth orbit in 2027. The crew named by the agency is made up of NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency, and the flight is planned to last 14 days. NASA's mission description says the purpose is to test lunar-lander operations before astronauts return to the Moon's surface, which the agency is targeting for 2028.
According to NASA, Blue Origin will first launch a test version of its Blue Moon Mark 2 lander into a circular low Earth orbit about 237 nautical miles up. Orion will then launch on the Space Launch System from Kennedy Space Center, spend its first two days checking systems and preparing for proximity operations, and dock with the lander for about two days of crew evaluations of the cabin, controls and life support. After undocking, Orion will rendezvous with a Starship Version 3 test article launched from Florida; that docking test will last up to two hours and the crew will not enter Starship. The astronauts will then have up to five more days in orbit for further tests, including evaluations of Orion Crew Survival System suits, science and technology demonstrations and a cellular biology experiment, before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off California.
Jeremy Parsons, NASA's Artemis program manager, said every piece of the Earth-orbit mission is designed to reduce risk before astronauts are put back on the Moon, and that each lesson gets the agency closer to a landing in 2028. BBC News reports that NASA changed the mission's plans in February 2026 because the SpaceX Starship lander was not ready and in-orbit refuelling it depends on has not been demonstrated, and that many in the field doubt the agency's timetable can be met. The details above come from NASA's published mission description and BBC's report, and the schedule remains subject to change.
