La Jornada: NASA announces the Artemis III crew

NASA announced the Artemis III crew, which will test the technology needed to return humans to the lunar surface. The team is made up of Frank Rubio, a military doctor who holds the US record for continuous stay in space; Randy Bresnik, former Marine fighter and test pilot; Luca Parmitano, Italian ESA astronaut with extensive experience, and Andre Douglas, engineer specialized in robotics.

The mission, scheduled for 2027, will carry out a series of rendezvous and docking maneuvers between the capsule Orion and other commercial ships developed by private companies such as Blue Origin and SpaceX. The goal is to validate the technologies that will be necessary for Artemis IV and other future manned expeditions to the Moon.

“Imagine how many spaceships, all of them destined to transport human beings, will be in orbit simultaneously: Dragon, Shenzhou, Soyuz, Starliner, Starship. It seems like the beginning of the future we imagined as children. “For me, it’s like the beginning of Earth’s first star fleet,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.

During the crew presentation, Isaacman highlighted that the mission represents a key step towards the construction of a lunar base and future expeditions to Mars.

To achieve its objectives, the Artemis III crew brings together profiles with extensive experience in military operations, space exploration and engineering. Among them stands out Frank Rubio, who in 2023 set a record for the United States after spending 371 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The mission commander is Randy Bresnik, who served as ISS commander for Expedition 53 and flight engineer for Expedition 52. Before joining NASA, he developed a military career that led him to participate in combat operations in the Middle East.

Another member of the mission is the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut, Luca Parmitano, who was the third European, and the first Italian, to command the ISS. In his professional career, he has accumulated six spacewalks, with a total duration of 33 hours and nine minutes.

Joining them will be Andre Douglas, who was selected by NASA in 2021 and served as a substitute crew member for the Artemis II mission. He is noted for his work at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which included the design and testing of space exploration systems.

The crew members agreed on the relevance of this mission for the next stages of the Artemis project. “We are honored to be part of the Artemis III crew, a unifying link between Artemis II, which we had two months ago, and Artemis IV, the mission that will return humans to the Moon,” Bresnik said.

The astronaut emphasized that within the Artemis project, the most important mission will always be the next one. “We are testing capabilities and making the operating procedures we have more and more precise because every mission we do after that will be more challenging and more complex.”

From now on, and for the next year, the crew will begin an intensive period of training and will ensure that they incorporate the lessons learned during Artemis II, in addition to contributing to the development of the landers and operating procedures that will be used in future missions.

For NASA, the Artemis program not only seeks to return to the Moon, but also to lay the foundations for a permanent human presence in deep space, boost an orbital economy and pave the way for future explorations to Mars.