NASA announces crew and flight plan for Artemis-3 Earth orbit mission next year
NASA today unveiled both the four-person crew that will fly its Artemis-3 Earth orbit mission next year as well as the mission’s basic plan, assuming both SpaceX and Blue Origin can get their respective lunar landers ready in time.
Crew assignments are as follows:
- NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, commander
- ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano, pilot
- NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, mission specialist
- NASA astronaut Andre Douglas, mission specialist
… NASA astronaut Bob Hines was named as a backup crew member.
Except for Douglas, all are veterans.
The mission details were also announced:
Artemis III includes launching the world’s most powerful rockets in short order. Blue Origin’s lander pathfinder, which is able to stay in orbit for multiple weeks, will launch first and await the crew. NASA will send the astronauts aboard Orion by SLS to orbit Earth, before rendezvousing in space with the company’s lander test article and spending about two days docked together for tests and technology demonstrations, including entering the lander.
After completing docked operations with Blue Origin, Orion will detach and await Starship. SpaceX’s Starship pathfinder will launch and meet up with Orion to spend about a day connected for checkouts and testing. After that, Orion and its crew will undock and return home, splashing safely down in the Pacific Ocean where a team from the U.S. Navy and NASA will recover the astronauts.
In total, the crew is expected to remain in space for about two weeks, with exact mission length to be determined in real-time based on launch, rendezvous, and docked operations.
All of this assumes that New Glenn has been fixed and is operational by late 2027 and can launch the Blue Moon Mark-2 manned lunar lander. It also assumes the lunar lander version of Starship is ready and operational and man-rated. It also assumes NASA can get SLS stacked and ready for launch much faster than previously expected.
All are big assumptions.
Other issues: Orion will be testing its docking system and its newly redesigned heat shield for the first time, with humans on board. As the return will be from low Earth orbit, the stress on the heat shield will be relatively light, reducing the risk considerably. Similarly, if the docking system fails they simply won’t dock, and can return to Earth instead. Both should work, however, as neither is cutting edge technology.
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”It also assumes NASA can get SLS stacked and ready for launch much faster than previously expected.”
It assumes no such thing. All of the components of the SLS for this launch have been built and are at the launch site nearly ready for stacking. The SLS could, if it were required, be ready for launch by the end of *this* year. It’s the rest of the Artemis III mission that won’t be ready until the end of next year.
So once again the SLS will be sitting around for a year waiting for its payload.
Not so surprisingly, there’s endless heartburn in the usual places online over the lack of any women on the crew or the backup.
Granted, NASA’s astronaut corps is now 42% women
But that doesn’t mean any guarantee that 42% of every crew has to be 42% women. Or for that matter, 58% men.
Richard M: Note that I make no mention of race or gender in my report of this announcement. It is irrelevant, just as the color of their eyes or their hair is irrelevant.
Imagine if I reported NASA’s new astronaut crew is the first to include two men of baldness, and one man of greying hair. It would be ridiculous. As it was when NASA during the Biden administration made a big deal about race and sex in every press release about Artemis-1.