Who NASA Chose For Its Artemis III Crew and What Their Mission Is

“While we recognize there are questions about how Blue Origin’s recent anomaly impacts our plans, setbacks are a learning opportunity,” Jeremy Parsons, the Acting Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator for the Moon to Mars Program Office at NASA, said during Tuesday’s event. “We are confident that New Glenn will be ready for Artemis III, together with Blue Origin.”

Here’s what to know about the Artemis III crew members and the moon mission.

Bresnik will be the commander of the Artemis III mission. Bresnik, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel, was selected as an astronaut in 2004, according to NASA. He was previously the commander of the International Space Station for Expedition 53 in 2017. Over the course of his career, he has logged more than 7,000 hours in nearly a hundred types of aircrafts, rotorcrafts, and gliders, as well as 3,600 hours in spacecrafts.

“We are certainly humbled as a crew to be able to be your crew that executes this Artemis III mission in space,” Bresnik said on Tuesday, “being that unifying link between the phenomenal Artemis II mission we just had two months ago and the Artemis IV mission that will follow ours, where we will again be the first to land humans on another celestial body—that celestial body being our neighbor in the sky at night, the moon.”