NASA says Artemis III will not land on the Moon. It will first be a demanding test mission, which the agency calls one of the most complex it has ever tried. The flight is planned for 2027 and will stay in low Earth orbit, not go to the Moon.
The crew will be NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas, plus Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency. They will launch in the Orion spacecraft.
According to NASA, the main goal is to try out the operations that future Moon landers will depend on. Testing these steps close to Earth first should lower the risk before astronauts go back down to the lunar surface on a later Artemis mission.
