Artemis III: Orion Docks With Blue Moon and Starship in Orbit

NASA's Artemis III has been reworked into a 14-day crewed mission in Earth orbit, planned to lift off in summer 2027, in which an Orion crew of four will dock with lunar landers from both Blue Origin and SpaceX. The plan was first announced in February 2026 and has changed since, according to the update the video describes. Three Americans and one Italian astronaut from the European Space Agency are to fly.

The Artemis III plan

Blue Origin launches first. A New Glenn will carry a stripped-down prototype of the Blue Moon Mark II lander to low Earth orbit at an altitude of 273 miles. Blue Origin had a failure on its launch pad earlier in the year, and NASA officials have said the company is rebuilding it and expects New Glenn to return to flight by December 2026 or January 2027 at the latest.

Once the lander is confirmed to be working, the crew launches on SLS. The core stage for Artemis III is finished inside the Vehicle Assembly Building and still needs the two side boosters integrated. Orion is reported to be about 95% complete and needs final life support testing. The upper stage has been removed, since that power is not needed, and a spacer keeps the rocket the same height so it lines up with the crew access bridge.

Orion first goes to an orbit reaching over 1,100 miles above the surface, then maneuvers down to meet Blue Moon, with two days of system checks first.

Docking with the landers

Docking with a lander was not part of Orion's original plan, which was to go to a Gateway station that is now canceled. Engineers will look at how software and guidance systems on the two spacecraft work together, and Blue Origin has never attempted an orbital docking.

The crew is to spend two days connected to Blue Moon, then enter the lander to assess the cabin, flight controls and life support, run emergency drills, and try controlling Blue Moon while docked. The video says it would be the first time NASA astronauts have tested a moon lander in space since the 1970s.

A V3 Starship then launches from SpaceX's new pad in Florida. It is the same production vehicle used on flights 13 and 14, with a docking port added in the nose cone, so astronauts cannot enter it. The rendezvous lasts only a couple of hours. NASA's reasons for accepting this include six years of Dragon crew flights without a problem and SpaceX's experience docking at the ISS, though no one has docked something as large as Starship.

The rest of the mission

After separating from Starship the crew is on day five of 14. They will test the orange survival suit by simulating a loss of pressure, and perform health assessments on each other without guidance from mission control. Two Starlink dishes have been installed on Orion for 4K streaming.

A lunar suit test has been removed. NASA turned to Axiom Space after its own suit effort, but Axiom's suit is also behind schedule. The new Sortie Suit allows 2-hour moonwalks, compared with 8-hour shifts for the original design and 2 hours 30 minutes for the first moonwalk in 1969.

Toward Artemis IV

NASA aims to move from Artemis III to Artemis IV by early 2028. The Boeing-built upper stage is replaced by a design based on the United Launch Alliance Centaur from the Vulcan rocket, which keeps the same launch pad.

NASA must choose between Blue Origin and SpaceX. Blue Moon Mark 1 has two cargo landings scheduled for 2027, Starship flight 15 will try to return to the launch tower, and a first propellant transfer between two Starships is scheduled for the first quarter of 2027. Both landers must complete an autonomous Moon landing and ascent before the decision, so NASA has mapped out two Artemis IV plans.

With Blue Moon, three New Glenn launches each carry a transfer stage, and a New Glenn 9 by 4 carries the lander. Orion then meets the lander in an elliptical polar orbit. With Starship, a depot and at least four more tanker launches fill the lander, and Orion docks with it nose to nose. That means at least six Starship launches, most likely six to eight.