HOUSTON - The astronaut recently named commander of Artemis 3 is confidently informing the world that a year is totally enough time to prepare for what NASA itself has described as "one of the most complex missions" in the agency's history. No pressure, though.
NASA named veteran astronaut Randy Bresnik as commander during a June 9 ceremony at the Johnson Space Center, alongside crewmates Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio (both NASA), and ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano. The four will embark on a two-week low Earth orbit mission aboard an Orion spacecraft, where they'll get to dock with prototypes of Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 2 and SpaceX's Starship lunar lander. Think of it as a very expensive test drive before the actual lunar landing attempts.
NASA has penciled in a mid-2027 launch, giving the crew roughly one year to train together. In a social media post before the announcement, the agency called it "one of history's most complex missions," which sounds like a great thing to read right before you start training.
Speaking a few hours after the announcement, Bresnik seemed unfazed. "I've been working Orion and everything that goes beyond Earth orbit for eight years," he said, noting his experience as an astronaut representative on the Artemis 2 mission management team. Douglas, despite being a rookie, served as a backup astronaut on Artemis 2. "Between the two of us, we'll be able to get Luca and Frank up to speed pretty quick," Bresnik said, adding with a historical flourish that the Apollo 11 crew was named just six months before they landed on the Moon. "So if they can do that in six months, we can make one year."
Bresnik pointed to the Artemis 2 mission's successful proximity operations demo - where Orion maneuvered around its upper stage - as a confidence booster. "The prox ops demonstration of Artemis 2 showed that this thing flies very, very well," he said, noting the simulators were "pretty darn close" to reality. He also expects the training load to be "much reduced" from Artemis 2.
As for the new docking port and systems on Orion for Artemis 3, Bresnik isn't sweating it. The real "long pole," he said, is having the lunar lander variants or test articles in space. "That's the biggest thing," he said, something the crew will track closely this summer. Until then, they'll focus on Orion training. "We get to just dive into Orion and just go whole hog on Orion," he said.
When more details emerge on altitude and rendezvous specifics, they'll adapt. Bresnik is also looking forward to completing as many flight testing objectives as possible to "buy down risk" for the Artemis 4 lunar landing attempt. "Spaceflight is hard and that's why the most important Artemis mission will always be the next Artemis mission," he said at the crew announcement, proving that even astronauts can't resist a good mission cliché.