3 members of NASA’s newly announced Artemis III space crew have Maryland ties

Months after Cockeysville native Reid Wiseman helped lead NASA’s historic Artemis II flight around the moon, three other astronauts with connections to Maryland will join the space agency’s next mission.

NASA announced Andre Douglas, a former Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory engineer, and Frank Rubio, a doctor and alumnus of the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, as mission specialists on Artemis III.

Alongside Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Randy Bresnik, who attended the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, the crew will spend two weeks in orbit next year.

They aren’t going to the moon, but will orbit Earth while practicing docking their Orion capsule with two lunar landers — one developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the other by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

“This mission will be one of the most complex that NASA has undertaken,” Norman Knight, director of the Flight Operations Directorate at NASA, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “We are counting on your courage and your dedication in fulfilling this critical role.”

This will be Douglas’ first space flight. Douglas, 40, was selected for NASA’s astronaut candidate class in 2021 while working as a systems engineer at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel.

Douglas worked for the lab from 2015 until he relocated to the Houston area to begin astronaut training. During that time, he also earned his master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Hopkins in 2019.

After being a part of the backup crew for Artemis II, he’ll now take flight as a member of the Artemis III mission.

“My brain is going a mile a minute,” Douglas said at the news conference, “but my heart, my heart is so warm. It is so full.”

Douglas, who is originally from Miami but considers Virginia his home, gave a shout-out to his wife, parents and two sons at NASA’s news conference. His fellow mission specialist, Rubio, expressed similar sentiments, thanking his wife and kids for their resilience.

Rubio graduated from the Uniformed Services University in 2010. He served in the U.S. Army for nearly 30 years as an aviator, physician and flight surgeon. Rubio joined NASA’s astronaut candidate class in 2017.

He broke the record for “the longest single duration spaceflight by a U.S. astronaut” on a mission aboard the International Space Station that took 371 days. Rubio also served as the class advisor to the astronaut dandidate dlass of 2025, and shouted out the next group in NASA’s lunar landing journey.

“We look forward to representing you guys and to helping to take the next step so we can watch you guys continue to make history,” Rubio said.

The Artemis program hopes to return astronauts to the moon’s surface by 2028. The announcement of Artemis III crew comes on the heels of the Artemis II mission, which carried humans the farthest they’ve been from Earth.

Artemis II Mission Specialist Christina Koch also has Maryland connections, having worked for APL and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt — similar to Douglas. She raced with the Goddard Sailing Association and Severn Sailing Association.

Artemis II was commanded by Wiseman, an alumnus of Dulaney High School in northern Baltimore County and Johns Hopkins University. Wiseman’s space travels fulfilled his sick father’s final wish. The Baltimore County Council recently honored him as “a true hero.” At Tuesday’s news conference, Wiseman “passed the baton” to Bresnik, who’ll command Artemis III.

“You got the controls,” Wiseman said.