NASA’s Next Moon Mission includes a Coastie and an Army Astronaut
Following up on yesterday’s NASA color birds article on their patriotic-themed 42-year-old F-15D and F-18B, let us take a look at the interesting lineup of Artemis III astronauts.
While we noted Artemis II was replete with Hornet drivers, both U.S. Navy and RCAF, the quartet at bat for AIII has a very different flavor.
With no USAF or Navy personnel, it is commanded by a Marine Hornet vet joined by an Italian test pilot, a Coastie and an Army astronaut.
The NASA Artemis III crew poses for an official portrait (from left: CDR Andre Douglas, USCGR; Col. Luca Parmitano, AM; Col. Randy Bresnik, USMC (Ret); Col. Frank Rubio, U.S.Army).
NASA astronaut Randolph “Randy” James Bresnik, Mission Commander, is a 58-year-old retired Marine colonel and Citadel graduate who flew F-18Cs with VMFA-212 on three overseas deployments before seeing combat in OIF with the Vikings of VMFA(AW)-225 and wrapping up his service as ops officer of VMFA-232. In NASA service, he flew on one of the last Shuttle missions (STS-129) and logged 138 days aboard the ISS, catching Soyuz MS-05 up and back for that one.
The Pilot for AIII is ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Salvo Parmitano, a 49-year-old colonel in the Italian Air Force who formerly flew zippy little AMXs before shifting gears to become a test pilot. He’s racked up 366 days in space between two stints on the ISS, both carried back and forth via Soyuz.
Things start to get really interesting with mission specialist CDR Andre Douglas, USCGR.
Douglas is a USCGA grad (regimental commander, class of ’08) who went on to earn advanced engineering degrees from the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins, and George Washington University. He spent four years on active duty, including as an engineering officer on the old 210-foot Reliance-class USCGC Vigilant (WMEC-617) working out of Florida, then reactivated his commission in the reserve in 2024. A Group 23 class ‘naught, this will be his first time in space, the only “rookie” on the crew.
Douglas, 40, is the only third Coast Guard astronaut since 1996, following in the footsteps of Capt. (ret.) Daniel Burbank and CDR (ret.) Bruce Melnick. Burbank, now a professor of mechanical engineering at the Coast Guard Academy, spent 188 days in space on two Space Shuttle missions and one mission aboard the ISS. Previously, Melnick, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard, logged over 300 hours in space.
AIII’s fourth member is the very well-traveled Col. Frank Rubio (USMA 1998) of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command. One of just 20 Army astronauts since 1978, Rubio has the American record for the longest single spaceflight, having spent 371 consecutive days aboard the ISS on Expeditions 68 and 69 from September 2022 to September 2023, during which he logged 5,963 orbits of the Earth, traveled more than 157 million miles, and conducted three spacewalks totaling 21 hours and 24 minutes.
Colonel Rubio on the ISS in 2017. Photo 221001-A-D0431-1001
Rubio definitely “walked the walk” before heading to NASA, flying over 1,100 hours in Army aircraft– including more than 600 as a Blackhawk pilot in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq- before serving as a member of the Black Knights parachute team, a flight surgeon at Redstone Arsenal, and as a battalion surgeon with “The Originals” of the 10th Special Forces Group.
New: Army Space Branch
Of note, the Army recently established its new Space Operations Branch, giving FA40 Space Operations Officers a dedicated “forever home” and, for the first time, joining it with newly created 40D enlisted Tactical Space Operations Specialists.
While FA40s have served the Army since 1999, they previously lacked an enlisted counterpart. The Army previously sheep-dipped enlisted personnel from the Air Defense Artillery, Signal, and Military Intelligence branches to temporarily execute space missions.
U.S. Army Space Branch will continue to use the USAF/USSF Space Operations Badge in Basic, Senior, and Master grades. The badge dates back to 1982 when it was first adopted by the Air Force and has been authorized for Army use since 2006.
The Master Space Badge, seen above Army jump wings.
NASA Looking for Folks for Year-long Simulated Mars/Moon missions
And in further NASA news, the agency is “recruiting research participants for the agency’s next simulated deep space mission. Beginning no earlier than August 2027, research volunteers will spend one year living and working in interplanetary environments at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, operating under isolated conditions expected during crewed missions to the Moon or Red Planet.”