NASA laid out its most detailed Artemis III flight plan yet on October 23, at an Artemis Acceleration briefing at Kennedy Space Center. The mission will send four astronauts into low Earth orbit for about 14 days in summer 2027 to rehearse the docking and lander work a future Moon landing will depend on.
Artemis III will not land on the Moon. NASA restructured it into a crewed rehearsal, and the briefing filled in the choreography: three rockets, three launch pads, and two commercial lunar landers, flown in sequence.
Blue Origin goes first. Its New Glenn rocket will launch a Blue Moon Mark 2 test lander from Launch Complex 36A, and the lander can wait in orbit for up to a month for the crew. NASA will then launch the four astronauts aboard the Space Launch System and Orion from Launch Complex 39B.
On day three, Orion docks with Blue Moon. The crew will climb aboard to test its life support systems and controls. SpaceX then launches a Starship test lander from Launch Complex 39A, and on day eight Orion docks with it for about two hours. That second docking is a docking test only, with no crew transfer into Starship.
Artemis program manager Jeremy Parsons called the campaign likely the most complicated launch campaign ever undertaken. The point of the rehearsal is to vet both landers before NASA picks one for Artemis IV, which is slated to attempt a crewed landing near the lunar south pole in 2028. NASA said it has not yet decided which provider will fly that landing, and will choose on readiness.
Source: CNN
