NASA announces Artemis III crew: Who are the 4 astronauts taking us a step closer to our mission to Mars?

NASA announced on Tuesday the group of astronauts who will crew the Artemis III mission as part of the space agency's broader program to return humans to the surface of the moon — and eventually journey to Mars. 

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman revealed that the following four astronauts have been assigned to the test flight: Mission specialists Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio, commander Randy Bresnik and pilot Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency. 

The backup crew member is Bob Hines, who most recently served as the pilot of NASA's SpaceX Crew-4 mission to the ISS.

"While Artemis II was all about moon joy, Artemis III will be all about Earth joy," Nicky Fox, NASA's head of science, said during Tuesday's announcement at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The main goal of Artemis III is to test the Orion spacecraft's ability to rendezvous with and dock with two lunar landers. The test flight will occur in low Earth orbit to discover any issues closer to home. 

The lunar landers are being developed and built by Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX. 

During Tuesday's announcement, NASA also revealed the plan for Artemis III: The Blue Origin lander will be the first to launch, followed by the Artemis III crew, who will be in the Orion spacecraft atop NASA's Space Launch System rocket. Once in orbit, Blue Origin and Orion will dock for several days to conduct tests before undocking from each other. Then, SpaceX's Starship will launch, rendezvous and dock with Orion for a day. Afterward, the crew will return to Earth aboard Orion. The Artemis III mission will last about two weeks in total. 

NASA needs the lunar landers to have the ability to transfer astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon for the future Artemis IV and V missions.

The rocket that is supposed to carry Blue Origin's lunar lander to space, the New Glenn, blew up on May 28 during a ground test at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The explosion damaged the only launchpad available to Blue Origin. Repairs could take months or even longer, posing a challenge to NASA's accelerated timeline to launch Artemis III in late 2027.

Despite the recent setbacks, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in his opening remarks that the Blue Origin lander will take part in Artemis III. 

SpaceX has also had its issues. The last test flight of Starship in May was mostly successful, but it was grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration after the booster stage malfunctioned and crashed in the Gulf of Mexico.

The four Artemis III astronauts follow in the space boots of the Artemis II crew: commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, who broke the all-time record for the farthest distance humans have traveled from Earth as they flew around the moon. 

As groundbreaking and inspiring as it was in its own right, Artemis II was, above all, also a test flight. Artemis II demonstrated a successful launch of the Space Launch System rocket to get the astronauts into space. Then the astronauts tested the Orion spacecraft's life support systems, which will eventually carry Artemis IV astronauts to the moon.