Luca Parmitano readies for Artemis III: Europe's first pilot to fly NASA's deep-space Orion around Earth in 2027
Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano has begun training as pilot of NASA's Artemis III, a two-week Earth-orbit flight that will test the Orion spacecraft and docking with future lunar landers before a crewed moon landing later this decade.
Crew announcement and role
On 10 June 2026, NASA named the four-person crew for Artemis III, with ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano assigned as pilot alongside commander Randy Bresnik and mission specialists Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas. The 49-year-old Italian, a veteran of two long-duration stays on the International Space Station, is the first European to hold a flight seat in the Artemis programme that aims to return humans to the lunar surface. He described receiving the news via a deliberately misleading email summoning him to a meeting at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
I did not expect to be selected, let alone as pilot. It is an honour to be surrounded by such extraordinary people, and I am also honoured by the extremely complex task ahead of us.
First steps inside Orion
Training began immediately after the public announcement. Parmitano entered the Orion crew module for the first time on 10 June and spent a full eight-hour shift familiarising himself with the cockpit, staying from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The capsule provides roughly eight cubic metres of living space for the crew during the short-duration mission.
I entered the Orion spacecraft for the first time and I can say it was a leap into the future after two missions with the Soyuz, which, despite the updates, was a spacecraft designed half a century ago. The navigation interface is very comfortable, as is what we call the human-machine integration.
Mission complexity and objectives
Unlike Artemis II, which sent four astronauts on a ten-day journey around the Moon in April 2026, Artemis III will stay in Earth orbit for about two weeks. The mission profile requires intense manual piloting to test the vehicle and rehearse proximity operations, including approach, docking, and undocking with the lunar lander concepts being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin. Parmitano stressed that piloting Orion in Earth orbit is actually more demanding than flying it in deep space because of the added orbital mechanics constraints. The flight is a critical rehearsal before the first crewed lunar landing, currently targeted for no earlier than 2028 under Artemis IV.
I hope problems arise. That is what we seek. It is more difficult to fly Orion here, because the limitations add up.
International cooperation and personal significance
Parmitano's selection carries diplomatic weight. NASA's decision to give a flight assignment to an ESA astronaut reaffirms the European agency's role as a full partner in the Artemis programme, extending beyond hardware contributions such as the European Service Module to include crew positions. NASA's flight operations director told the crew that together they will go farther and faster. For Italy, the mission revives a tradition of human spaceflight that has not seen an Italian in a command-track role since the Apollo era.
The astronaut is no stranger to high-stakes situations. In 2005, as an Italian Air Force pilot, he safely landed a fighter jet after a bird strike shattered his canopy over the English Channel. During a 2013 spacewalk, his helmet began filling with water; he kept his heart rate steady and returned to the airlock safely. ESA director general Josef Aschbacher later noted that Parmitano handled the life-threatening crisis with remarkable calm.
