Watch Live: NASA names 4 astronauts for next Artemis mission

Space Watch Live: NASA names 4 astronauts to crew of next Artemis mission By William Harwood William Harwood CBS News Space Consultant Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. Read Full Bio William Harwood June 9, 2026 / 11:16 AM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google NASA is introducing the four astronauts of the next Artemis moon program mission on Tuesday. The announcement at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, set for 11:30 a.m. ET, kicks off a year or more of mission-specific training for the Artemis III crew. They are expected to launch into Earth orbit next year to test rendezvous and docking procedures with moon landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin — a critical milestone before the U.S. can send astronauts back to the moon for landing in 2028.What the Artemis III mission will doThe Artemis III crew will need to master the same operations that will be carried out in lunar orbit on a subsequent flight before America's first moon landing in nearly 55 years.Launching in an Orion capsule atop NASA's Space Launch System rocket, the Artemis III crew will carry out a mission similar to NASA's Apollo 9 flight in March 1969 when three astronauts tested the spindly lunar excursion module in Earth orbit. That flight came after a successful lunar orbit mission, Apollo 8, at the end of 1968.Then the Apollo 10 flight tested the lunar module in orbit around the moon before Apollo 11 finally made the first moon landing in the Sea of Tranquility in July 1969.The Artemis program's version of Apollo 8, sending Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a flight around the moon, was successfully completed in April.NASA's plans for a moon landingAs of now, Artemis III is the only test flight NASA is planning before making a landing attempt in 2028 with whicheve...