NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman confirmed Saturday that the announcement of the Artemis III mission crew is on the horizon, delivering the news at Ellington Field at Johnson Space Center in Houston

While Apollo was a ‘Lewis and Clark-like’ scientific expedition, planetary research professor James Head III said, Artemis has bigger ambitions: establishing a permanent base on the moon.

The Artemis program was officially named and announced by NASA in May 2019, when Artemis III was intended to land “the first woman and next man” on the lunar South Pole in 2024. Since then, the uncrewed Artemis I test flight launched in 2022, and Artemis II is complete.

Over the past eight days, the world has watched four intrepid explorers leave Earth, fly around the Moon, and make spaceflight history. The moments of reverence, camaraderie, and bravery we’ve witnessed since the launch of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission have done wonders for my faith in humanity, but sadly, all good things must come to an end.

They were flying a spacecraft that had never carried crew before and entering the atmosphere on a trajectory that had never been attempted before, protected by a heat shield that had caused engineers worry ever since the flight of Artemis I in 2022.