Photo above courtesy of NASA/Joel Kowsky.
University of Tennessee graduate Randy “Komrade” Bresnik has been named the commander of NASA’s Artemis III mission, which is the next phase in the space agency’s plan to return humans to the moon.
NASA announced the mission’s crew on Tuesday, June 9. Bresnik and fellow NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Andre Douglas, and the European Space Agency’s Luca Parmitano are expected to execute the launch next year.
Bresnik graduated from the Tickle College of Engineering in 2002 with a master’s degree in aviation systems from the University of Tennessee Space Institute. He is one of nine UT graduates who have ventured to space as astronauts.
“The University of Tennessee Space Institute and Tickle College of Engineering have been a national source of great astronauts for many years, and it is wonderful to see Randy Bresnik get more time in space on the next Artemis mission,” said TCE Dean Matthew Mench, the Wayne T. Davis Dean’s Chair of the college. “We are incredibly proud to have another UT graduate command such a critical space mission for NASA and add to his already distinguished record in space missions.”
During Artemis III, the crew will orbit Earth while practicing docking the Orion capsule with two lunar landers. The mission includes a dramatic multi-launch campaign of the world’s most powerful rockets, testing integrated hardware between Orion and the landers, including system interfaces, software, propulsion, and communications.
The Artemis III mission builds on the successful Artemis II flight completed in April and will help NASA prepare to send the first astronauts to Mars.
“We are certainly humbled as a crew,” Bresnik told reporters on Tuesday. “Being that unifying link between the phenomenal Artemis II mission we just had two months ago and the Artemis IV mission that will follow ours, where we will again…land humans on another celestial body.”
This will be the third mission to space for Bresnik. He launched aboard space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-129 mission to the International Space Station in 2009 and later flew on the Soyuz MS-05 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the space station, serving as a flight engineer for the station’s Expedition 52 and commander of Expedition 53.
A California native and retired U.S. Marine colonel, Bresnik was selected by NASA in the 2004 astronaut candidate class. He has logged more than 7,000 hours in 95 types of aircraft and is a fellow in the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. Since 2018, Bresnik has served as assistant to the chief of the Astronaut Office for exploration, overseeing the development and testing of the spacecraft and systems that will operate during Artemis missions.
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey ([email protected])