On Tuesday, NASA announced the crew of Artemis III, the mission planned for 2027 that will serve to try some of the most delicate steps that will make it possible to return to the Moon after fifty years from the last time. On board Artemis III there will be four astronauts: US commander Randy Bresnik, specialists Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio, and Italian Luca Parmitano, who will be the pilot of the mission.
Parmitano, 49 years old, was a test pilot and colonel of the Italian Air Force, and has already spent 366 days in space in two missions on the International Space Station. It will be the first astronaut of the European Space Agency assigned to an Artemis mission. For Italy it is a high profile participation in a program that, while being driven by NASA, depends more and more on a network of private agencies and companies.
Artemis III will last about two weeks and will not arrive until the Moon. The mission will take place around the Earth, where the crew will have to test maneuvers of coupling, separation and coordination between different space vehicles. These are quite technical but fundamental operations: before bringing astronauts to the lunar surface, NASA wants to verify that Orion, the crew capsule, can work together with the lunar modules developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX, respectively the two private space agencies of Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, and Elon Musk, the owner – among other things – of Tesla.
According to the plan illustrated by the program manager Artemis, Jeremy Parsons, the first will be the lunar module of Blue Origin. Afterwards he will leave Orion, mounted on the rocket Space Launch System, with the four astronauts on board. Once the orbit is reached, Orion and the lunar module will have to hook up and carry out a series of tests for a few days. After the release, Starship will also be launched, the huge spaceship of SpaceX, which will in turn reach Orion and connect to the capsule.
The sense of mission is to put together different pieces of a system that has never been used before with humans on board. The return to the Moon planned for 2028 will not only depend on the rocket of NASA or the Orion capsule, but also on the capacity of private landers to arrive in space, to hook properly, support the crew and then allow the descent to the lunar surface.
Parmitano commented on the appointment saying he felt honored and thanked Italy, ESA, NASA and the rest of the crew. He used a space metaphor to tell his own path: Italy as a launch base, ESA as a launch tower, NASA as a rocket.
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