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Before NASA sends astronauts back to the surface of the Moon, it will first send them into Earth orbit to practise with the very machines that are supposed to land them there. That is the plan NASA laid out on October 23 at Kennedy Space Center: Artemis III, launching in summer 2027, will be a 14-day dress rehearsal in low Earth orbit, built around docking with two different lunar landers — SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon — without ever leaving Earth's neighbourhood.
According to reports from Florida Today and Space Launch Schedule, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman reaffirmed at the briefing that the first crewed landing since Apollo 17 in 1972 remains targeted for Artemis IV in 2028. Artemis III exists to make that landing less of a leap. As Isaacman put it, going straight from a flight around the Moon to a full landing would be too big a gap — so NASA is inserting a rehearsal in between.
Three rockets, three pads, one crew
The choreography is what makes Artemis III remarkable. Three of the most powerful rockets in the world will fly in sequence, from three different launch pads, to serve a single four-person crew. Artemis program manager Jeremy Parsons called it likely the most complicated launch campaign ever undertaken, and the sequence explains why.
First, Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket will lift the Blue Moon Mark 2 test lander into low Earth orbit from Launch Complex 36A at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The lander can loiter in orbit for up to a month, waiting patiently for its crew. Then NASA's Space Launch System will launch the four astronauts — Randy Bresnik, Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano — aboard the Orion spacecraft from pad 39B. On the third day of the mission, Orion will dock with Blue Moon, and the astronauts will open the hatch, climb inside, and test the lander's life-support systems and controls.
Then comes Starship
After the Blue Moon work is done, SpaceX will launch a Starship test lander from pad 39A. On day eight, Orion will undock from Blue Moon and dock with Starship's nose cone for about two hours — a docking-only demonstration. The crew will not enter Starship on this mission. That distinction matters: NASA is testing the docking interface and the handling of two very different vehicles, not yet asking astronauts to live inside both.
The rest of the 14 days will be filled with Orion systems checks, spacesuit evaluations, human research and technology demonstrations. NASA is also pursuing a lighter, simpler spacesuit design for the early moonwalks, aiming to roughly halve suit mass to about 250 pounds, while Axiom Space continues developing more advanced suits for later missions.
Why not just land?
The honest answer is risk. The original Artemis III was meant to land, but NASA restructured it earlier this year after concluding that stacking too many firsts into a single mission — a new rocket, a new spacecraft, two new landers and a landing — was asking for trouble. A rehearsal in Earth orbit lets crews practise rendezvous and docking while a safe return home is always hours away, not days.
There is also a race behind the schedule. NASA has said openly that it aims to return American astronauts to the lunar surface before China, which is working toward landing its own astronauts by around 2030, and to build toward infrastructure for a lasting Moon base. Outside experts remain sceptical that the 2028 landing date will hold, and NASA itself is keeping both lander options open for Artemis IV rather than committing early to SpaceX or Blue Origin. That competition, between two companies as much as between two countries, is part of the point: Artemis III tests both landers so the landing mission can use whichever proves itself.
If the rehearsal works, the payoff is a landing mission whose hardest manoeuvres have already been flown. If it slips, the 2028 date slips with it. Either way, summer 2027 will be the moment the Moon programme stops being a plan on paper and becomes three rockets flying in formation around one crew. Related space coverage: how Ukraine is building its own Starlink alternative and OpenAI's offline frontier training.