WASHINGTON, June 6, 2026, 17:04 EDT
NASA is set to announce the four astronauts tapped for Artemis III on Tuesday, selecting a team for what’s now an Earth-orbit shakedown of Orion and commercial lunar landers, pushed to 2027 after plans for a moon landing changed. Johnson Space Center in Houston will host the event, which also features a briefing on how preparations for the flight are coming along.
Timing is key here: NASA is pressing ahead with hardware shipments even as it works to keep its 2028 goal for landing astronauts on the Moon alive. On June 2, the last eight booster motor segments for the Space Launch System—SLS, as it’s known—rolled out of Utah bound for Kennedy Space Center. The segments will go into the twin solid rocket boosters, responsible for more than 75% of the rocket’s liftoff power.
Artemis III is set to operate in low Earth orbit, just a few hundred miles up, focusing on rendezvous and docking exercises—two spacecraft meeting and connecting while in space. NASA officials expect Orion, the agency’s crew capsule, to run operations alongside one or possibly both commercial human landing systems. That’s NASA’s catch-all phrase for the vehicles designed to ferry astronauts to the Moon on subsequent missions.
Jeremy Parsons, acting assistant deputy administrator with NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration systems office, described the flight as an “important stepping stone.” This mission marks the first Artemis launch campaign to use multiple spacecraft and introduce new capabilities. Translation: NASA is looking to practice the tough maneuvers ahead of sending astronauts to the Moon. NASA
NASA plans to send the Artemis III crew up from Kennedy Space Center, putting them on Orion atop the SLS rocket—the heavy-lifter designed for deep space missions. According to the agency, this flight comes on the heels of April’s successful Artemis II crewed test mission.
That’s a big shift for a program previously tied to sending Americans back to the moon. NASA’s official timeline now has Artemis III set for a 2027 demo, and Artemis IV as the next scheduled moon landing, aiming for early 2028.
There’s trouble at Cape Canaveral after Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket blew up in a hot-fire test last week, Reuters reported. The blast damaged the company’s launch pad, ramping up the stakes for a rocket intended to back both NASA’s Artemis program and Amazon’s Leo satellite project. No injuries were reported, and the Amazon satellites weren’t on the vehicle.
Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO, told Reuters that the pad’s main fuel tanks are undamaged, though the support tower does need fixing—just repairs, not a total rebuild. “We will fly again before the end of this year,” he said. Reuters
NASA isn’t putting all its hopes on that outcome. Administrator Jared Isaacman said the agency was “de-coupling the lander from the launch vehicle” following the New Glenn explosion. According to Spaceflight Now, a NASA spokesperson confirmed the agency now wants Blue Origin’s Blue Moon cargo lander—and maybe its crew variant—shifted to a launch vehicle other than New Glenn. Spaceflight Now
This could get tricky. Blue Origin executive John Couluris has said using Blue Moon with New Glenn helped the team “optimize the entire stack.” According to Spaceflight Now, the Blue Moon landers were actually designed around New Glenn’s seven-meter fairing. By comparison, the Falcon Heavy from SpaceX comes with a slimmer fairing, and its launch pads aren’t equipped to handle a hydrogen-fueled Blue Moon lander. Spaceflight Now
Here’s the risk, laid out: delays at Blue Origin, a not-ready-for-primetime SpaceX Starship lander for the docking test, or a slimmed-down Artemis III from NASA—each one makes hitting that 2028 landing date tougher. NASA safety advisers flagged the mission as “high risk” earlier this year, pointing to a stack of first-time hurdles: new landers, new spacesuits, even untried propellant transfer. SpacePolicyOnline
With the crew now named, Artemis III finally has its public face. But the central engineering issue remains unresolved. NASA still needs to determine which lander hardware will dock with Orion in orbit, the mission’s duration, and just how much of the moon-landing sequence can be safely rehearsed ahead of Artemis IV.
