NASA is set to reveal the four astronauts selected for the Artemis III mission on Tuesday, June 9, during a live broadcast from the Johnson Space Center in Houston at 11 a.m. ET. The crew will head to Earth orbit in 2027 to put one or both commercial lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin through their paces. This marks a critical step in NASA’s push to establish a lasting human footprint on and around the moon.
The Artemis program has already seen success with Artemis II, which earlier this year sent four astronauts—NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen—on a lunar flyby without landing. Now, Artemis III aims to build on that momentum, launching no earlier than late 2027. The crew, drawn from NASA’s active astronaut corps and the European Astronaut corps, will include a commander, a pilot, and two mission specialists. Specifics on the mission design and crew roles will be shared closer to launch.
The mission will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Orion spacecraft atop the Space Launch System rocket. In low Earth orbit, the astronauts will test rendezvous and docking procedures with the Human Landing Systems from SpaceX and Blue Origin—a crucial skill for future lunar landings. While Artemis III won’t touch the moon, it sets the stage for later missions where the lander will serve as living quarters for astronauts collecting samples, running experiments, and testing new technologies on the lunar surface. After their orbital work, the crew will reunite in Orion and return to Earth.
The Artemis program began with Artemis I, an uncrewed Orion test flight around the moon in 2022. Artemis II’s crew was announced in April 2023, three years before its lunar flyby in April 2026. For future missions, uncrewed landers will be sent to lunar orbit to await astronauts arriving via Orion or NASA’s Gateway space station. The crew announcement will stream live on NASA+ and NASA’s YouTube channel.
