Nasa has named the Artemis III crew - what is their mission?

Nasa has named the Artemis III crew - what is their mission? 40 minutes ago Share Save Add as preferred on Google Pallab Ghosh , Science Correspondent and Alison Francis , Senior Science Journalist NASA/Reid Wiseman The Earth as seen from the Artemis II mission's Orion space capsule Nasa has named the four astronauts for its Artemis III mission, due to launch in 2027. They will not land on the Moon, but will fly to low Earth orbit where they will dock with prototype lunar landers in a rehearsal for the landing to come. The 2028 Artemis IV mission is scheduled to put American astronauts on the Moon for the first time since 1972. What will the Artemis III mission do? Artemis III will launch on Nasa's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. The launch date has not yet been confirmed. The four astronauts will travel inside the Orion capsule, the same vehicle used during the Artemis II mission in April 2026. Unlike in that mission, Orion will not loop around the Moon during Artemis III. Instead, it will remain in low Earth orbit, around 290 miles above the planet - roughly the distance from Manchester to Edinburgh, and 40 miles higher than the International Space Station (ISS). That is where it will rendezvous and dock with the prototype lunar landers, called pathfinders. At least one crew member is expected to climb inside a lander to test the hatches, life-support connections and the new Axiom spacesuits. The Axiom suits are literally and figuratively cool, designed by the Italian fashion house Prada and built by Houston-based Axiom Space. Axiom has done the engineering - including, for the first time, a backup cooling loop in case the primary fails. Prada is responsible for the inner garment that is designed to distribute chilled water across the body during the eight-hour spacewalks on the Moon planned as part of the subsequent Artemis IV mission. The Artemis III crew will be aboard Orion for slightly longer than the nine days spent there by the Artemis II team. Their return journey will test an upgraded heat shield during the capsule's fiery re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. The mission was originally conceived to be the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972, but Nasa changed its plans in February 2026. The reason was simple: the SpaceX Starship lander contracted to carry astronauts to the surface is not ready, and the in-orbit refuelling it depends on has never been demonstrated. Rather than slip the schedule further, Nasa repurposed the mission as a crewed docking rehearsal — so that when the landers do fly, the techniques to dock with them and the suits to enter them will already have been tested with people on board. In terms of the in-orbit refuelling, a March 2026 report from the US Government Accountability Office found that Elon Musk's SpaceX had made "limited progress" maturing the technology. The first refuelling demonstration is, optimistically, scheduled for late 2026. Who are the Ar