Artemis III Will Send Four Astronauts to Earth Orbit, Not the Moon's Surface

NASA's next update on its Moon plans comes Friday, Oct. 23, at the agency's Kennedy Space Center, and the agenda includes Artemis III: a mission that will send four astronauts to low Earth orbit next year to test critical systems needed for future lunar landings. The same update covers how plans to return American astronauts to the Moon by 2028 are progressing, NASA says — though on this plan that return is not Artemis III's job. The next crewed Artemis flight is a rehearsal in Earth orbit, with the surface landing still ahead of it, which puts the 2028 date's weight on how hardware behaves in a test that hasn't flown yet.