NASA announces astronauts for its Artemis III mission to test new moon landers

NASA named the four astronauts it plans to send on the Artemis III mission Tuesday, the next major step in its return-to-the-moon program.

Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas are scheduled to launch into Earth orbit next year to test out at least one of the commercially developed lunar landers expected to carry NASA astronauts to the surface of the moon in 2028. Bresnik will be the mission's commander, with Parmitano, an Italian astronaut with the European Space Agency, serving as the pilot. Douglas and Rubio will be mission specialists, and NASA astronaut Bob Hines will train with the crew as a backup member.

Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin are racing to build the landers that the Artemis III mission aims to test. Both companies said in updates Tuesday that they expect their landers to be ready by then.

"This test flight will enable us to prove we can carry out highly choreographed operations with our partners across hardware interfaces, software propulsion systems, and life support elements with crew in the high stakes space environment," said Jeremy Parsons, NASA's Artemis Program Manager.

The Artemis III mission is expected to last about two weeks, Parsons said — roughly four days longer than the Artemis II mission around the moon earlier this year. It's intended to be the Artemis program's final testing mission. If it's successful, NASA then plans to land a crew on the moon with the subsequent mission, Artemis IV.

"Every aspect of Artemis III will give us insight into how to refine our plans for Artemis IV," Parsons said. "This mission is deliberately designed to take calculated risks, so that future crews will be safer and ultimately successful when we put boots on the lunar surface."

Eventually, NASA's Artemis program aims to establish a sustained human presence on the moon. The space agency announced plans this year to spend $20 billion to build a base on the lunar surface.

Initially, NASA had planned for the Artemis III mission to land astronauts on the moon, but NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman overhauled the program this year to add missions and increase the pace of launches ahead of a moon landing attempt.

So the plan for Artemis III crew is now to stay closer to Earth and test rendezvous and docking operations with a moon lander from SpaceX or Blue Origin — or both. These maneuvers are essential because NASA's moon-landing plan calls for one of the landers to meet up with its Orion spacecraft — the capsule that carried the Artemis II crew in April — while orbiting the moon. Two astronauts would then transfer to the lander, which would carry them down to the lunar surface. While there, the spacecraft would serve as their living quarters. To finish the mission, the lander would blast off the moon's surface, then redock with Orion, which would take the crew back to Earth.

If it all works out as planned, the U.S. could pull off its first moon landing in more than 50 years before China puts its own astronauts on the lunar surface. China has said it plans to do that by 2030.

Parsons said key elements of the Artemis III program are coming along nicely. A redesigned heat shield for NASA's Orion spacecraft, for example, has been built and tested, he said. During the Artemis II mission, some critics were concerned about that heat shield because it sustained damage during the uncrewed Artemis I mission.

"Our improved heat shield has been fully inspected and is ready to be installed," Parsons said.

However, questions remain about Blue Origin's readiness. The company recently suffered a major setback: One of its rockets exploded during an engine test at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The fireball destroyed one of Blue Origin's New Glenn rockets — the system it would use to launch its lunar lander into space — and caused extensive damage to the company's only operational launch pad. The accident could affect Artemis III in addition to other upcoming NASA moon missions.

"Manufacturing is well underway on the Artemis III Mark 2 lunar crew module, our storable reaction control system, our docking systems, and our environmental control and life support system. Our factories are running around the clock shifts in a responsible manner," said John Couluris of Blue Origin. "We expect to complete the vehicle for Artemis III and be ready for launch in 2027."

Just days before the explosion, NASA had awarded Blue Origin a contract to deliver payloads to the moon on an uncrewed mission later this year — the first in a series of robotic missions NASA is planning in preparation to land a crew. Through those missions, NASA intends to scout the moon's south pole and test technologies the Artemis IV astronauts could use there.

For the Artemis III launch, NASA plans to use the same setup it did for Artemis II, sending the newly announced crew into orbit in its Orion spacecraft, which will lift off atop its Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com