Artemis III Crew, Revealed in Houston, Is on the President's Schedule for a White House Greeting on Wednesday

The next Americans-and-partner crew to fly toward the Moon comes through Houston - and on Wednesday, its members are on the president's schedule. The White House daily guidance for Wednesday, October 28 lists a 1:30 p.m. Eastern greeting for the Artemis III crew in the Oval Office, closed to the press, in a day that also takes the president to Chillicothe, Ohio for evening remarks. For Space City, the crew is a hometown story: NASA revealed it in June at an event at Johnson Space Center, where Administrator Jared Isaacman introduced the four astronauts.

Commander Randolph "Randy" Bresnik, a retired Marine colonel, has flown to space twice and logged 149 days off the planet. His pilot is the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano, also headed for a third flight - his career includes a spacewalk that was cut short when his helmet began filling with water. Mission specialist Frank Rubio holds the American record for the longest single spaceflight, 371 days, a stay that stretched when his Soyuz ride home was found damaged. The fourth seat belongs to Andre Douglas, a Coast Guard reserve officer and systems engineer from NASA's 2021 astronaut class, who backed up the Artemis II crew and will make his first spaceflight.

Their mission, targeted for 2027, is deliberately flown close to home. Artemis III will stay in low Earth orbit and run a series of rendezvous and docking tests between the Orion spacecraft and commercially built lunar landers - the rehearsal, in NASA's framing, for the crewed landing that follows. Isaacman, introducing the crew in Houston, called the broader campaign a return to the Moon to build a Moon base and master the skills for what comes next. Wednesday's greeting is a ceremony, not a milestone - but it puts the four names Houston's space workforce will train around for the next year in the Oval Office, six days before an election that will decide who funds them.