SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Today NASA announced the names of the Artemis III mission's four-astronaut crew. NASA commander Randy Bresnik, European Space Agency pilot Luca Parmitano of Italy, and NASA mission specialists Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas will head to space at some point next year, according to the agency's timeline. Artemis III was initially supposed to be the mission that landed on the moon for the first time in over 50 years. Instead, it will pave the way for a later crew to take that step by staying in Earth orbit and testing out the spacecraft astronauts will eventually use to land on the moon's surface. Artemis III will last two weeks and will involve the launch of three different rockets, one carrying the Artemis crew and two others carrying lander prototypes made by private space companies Blue Origin and SpaceX. Mission specialist Andre Douglas joins us now from Houston. Welcome, and congratulations.
ANDRE DOUGLAS: Hey. Thank you so much. It has been an awesome day and glad to be here.
DETROW: I can't imagine. I mean, what was your reaction when you first got the news you'd be heading to space with this crew?
DOUGLAS: Man, I - first of all, going to space, that's just - that has been my childhood dream since I was 7 years old. So for that to finally come to fruition, I am ecstatic. And yeah, to go with this crew, I mean, each one of them I've worked with in the office. They're wonderful gentlemen. So it's a privilege and an honor to be able to do this with them in space and do a cool test mission - right? - like, looking at both of these landers and trying to figure out (inaudible) is going to be fantastic.
DETROW: You were on the backup crew for Artemis II, and I'm curious what you learned from working with them and watching them as they trained for three years for that mission - you trained as well - and then watching them be in the public eye and capture everyone's imagination in the way that they did.
DOUGLAS: Yeah. I mean, it was cool to watch, you know, that crew grow from when I first started with them and then until we launched and got them back. I mean, we did a lot of work together with respect to training. I mean, there was something we did in Iceland where we did a, like, 24-mile hike in two days in Iceland just to go through a hard challenge of land navigation as if we're, you know, learning how to be really good operators. And so there's many events like that where we bonded, we started to figure out, you know, norming, storming, forming, all of those things. And then, honestly, it was really cool to see how we became really good operators, and not just individually, but, like, we became one mind. Like, there's a bunch of responsibility in Orion, not just flying the controls but dealing with, you know, the potable water system and the cargo net, the suits, you know, all of our food and, of course, the toilet, right?
DETROW: (Laughter).
DOUGLAS: So all that stuff has to get done, so we - when things pop up, we have to shift and tackle that as one unit. So it was fantastic.
DETROW: You know, Artemis II had three years to train. This is a pretty tight timeline for Artemis III, you know, depending on when the launch happens, something like a year. And there are so many different complicated parts of this mission. I'm wondering what to you is the priority right now? What are you thinking the most about as you start to train for this mission?
DOUGLAS: I mean, for me, I think the thing that's going to be important is really learning Orion - right? - and really learning our suits. I think going through Artemis II, one of the things I realized is, you know, the suit is your survival system, and you're trying to make sure you know that cold. And then everything else after that is bonus because you want to make sure you come back on entry safely and soundly. So focusing on the basics is going to be very important, and then whatever else after that will be a bonus. And I have confidence in this team that we can do it. And who's to say that, you know, we could have done Artemis II in less than a year, right? The three years came from, like, extension of the heat shield work and a bunch of other things. So just excited to support what we're doing.
DETROW: I'm wondering - a lot of talk today at the announcement about that recent Blue Origin rocket explosion. How worried were you when that happened just knowing how important that rocket is to the broader mission?
DOUGLAS: You know, that is just a setback. I mean, there was a lot of setbacks, again, with the heat shield on Orion for Artemis II. Even when we were trying to launch on January of 2026, we had to, you know, go back and fix all the seals for the rocket and then finally launched very smoothly on April 1 of this year. So I think this is just another testament to humanity here and how we're going to get this done. And, you know, the American people come together with the Italians and everybody to get this fixed and off. But yeah, definitely a great question, but, man, I am super excited to see how we're going to beat that timeline.
DETROW: Andre Douglas, thank you so much and good luck on the mission.
DOUGLAS: I appreciate your time. You have a good one.
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