NASA could launch Artemis III from Florida’s Space Coast as early as June 2027, according to a WESH report citing Administrator Jared Isaacman and communications from the agency. The target would give NASA a more specific marker for one of its most consequential upcoming crewed missions, but it is not a firm launch date.
The distinction is important because Artemis III, as NASA now describes it, is not scheduled to land astronauts on the Moon. Instead, four astronauts are to spend roughly two weeks in low Earth orbit testing rendezvous and docking operations with commercial test vehicles connected to the agency’s Blue Origin and SpaceX lunar-lander programs. NASA says those demonstrations are meant to reduce risk before Artemis IV, its planned 2028 crewed mission to the lunar south pole.
A month target, not a committed launch date
NASA’s formal June 9 Artemis III announcement publicly set the mission in 2027, without naming a launch month. WESH reported on Aug. 24 that Isaacman said the spacecraft could fly as early as June and that his team had confirmed the tentative timing to the station. The available NASA release therefore supports the year, while the more precise June target remains an attributed, earliest-date estimate.
Schedules for human spaceflight often move as hardware testing and integration expose problems that cannot be fully anticipated on paper. In this case, the next milestones are substantial. NASA Deputy Press Secretary George Alderman told WESH that the agency aims to stack the Space Launch System core stage and boosters in coming months, conduct tanking tests before the end of the year, and then move the rocket back to Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building for additional integration, including stacking the Orion crew capsule.
Those steps are dependencies, not routine formalities. Tanking tests load cryogenic propellants into the rocket and assess how the vehicle, its ground systems and operating procedures perform under launch-like conditions. Orion integration would bring the spacecraft that carries the crew together with the SLS launch vehicle. A successful completion of one milestone does not guarantee the next; NASA has not published a final day or month for liftoff.
What Artemis III is designed to test
The revised Artemis III plan calls for an SLS rocket to launch Orion and four astronauts from Kennedy Space Center. In Earth orbit, Orion is expected to carry out rendezvous and docking demonstrations with test versions from one or both commercial human landing systems under development by Blue Origin and SpaceX. The crew would then return in Orion for a Pacific Ocean splashdown.
Rendezvous means bringing two spacecraft into the same orbit and closing the distance safely; docking is the physical joining of the vehicles. Such work requires precise navigation, communications, propulsion and spacecraft-control performance. NASA’s plan is intended to exercise the interfaces and operational procedures that would be needed when astronauts eventually transfer between Orion and a lunar lander on a Moon-bound mission.
The mission’s planned duration is about two weeks, but NASA has said the actual length would depend on the timing of launch, rendezvous and docked operations. That operational flexibility is another reason a stated launch target should not be read as a guarantee of a fixed mission timeline.
Crew training and the path toward Artemis IV
NASA has assigned Randy Bresnik as commander and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano as pilot. Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio are the mission specialists, while Bob Hines is the backup crew member. The international crew began training shortly after its June assignment, according to WESH, starting with foundational Orion instruction.
The mission sequence also clarifies the role of Artemis III in NASA’s changed lunar program. Earlier public expectations for Artemis III centered on a crewed lunar landing. In the agency’s current published plan, the Earth-orbit mission is a systems and operations test intended to support Artemis IV, which NASA has identified as the first planned crewed expedition to the lunar south pole in 2028.
That makes the reported June 2027 target significant even without a lunar destination. It would leave a relatively short interval before the 2028 mission NASA has outlined, while giving engineers and astronauts a chance to test the Orion-to-lander operational chain in space. Whether that interval holds will depend on the forthcoming SLS tests, Orion integration and the readiness of the commercial test vehicles that Artemis III is meant to encounter in orbit.