NASA Commander breaks silence on all-male Artemis III crew outrage
This week, NASA unveiled the crew of its upcoming Artemis III mission which is expected to launch in 2027.
This comes after Artemis II returned from its flyby around the Moon earlier this year, marking the first time a female astronaut has ever ventured to the lunar rock.
However, despite the excitement surrounding further lunar missions, this recent announcement has sparked backlash online.
NASA revealed Andre Douglas, Luca Parmitano, Randy Bresnik and Frank Rubio will make up the crew of Artemis III.
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In a post published to X, formerly Twitter, the space agency wrote: “Introducing Artemis III. Four astronauts. Three launches. Two dockings. One splashdown.
“In 2027, the Artemis III mission will practice docking the Orion spacecraft with two lunar landers in low Earth orbit — the capability we need to return humanity to the Moon’s surface.”
Why is the Artemis III crew selection facing backlash?
But social media users have been quick to point out that the crew is made up of four men, with no women expected to be included in the mission.
On X, one user said: “Not a single woman flying on Artemis III is an insane choice.”
Another wrote: “you cannot convince me that out of all the women astronauts in nasa, esa and csa they couldn’t find at least one who is qualified for this mission.”
And a third person added: “I’m so so so excited for the Artemis program but so so so tired of being disappointed by qualified women not being chosen.”
Since then, the astronauts themselves have been quizzed on the matter, with an interviewer for CNN asking: “I know you guys weren’t in charge of who picked who but I wonder, was it intentional not to pick women or just, that’s just the way the dice rolled?”
In response, Commander Bresnik replied: “No, certainly not intentional. I mean you could look at our astronaut office and see the wide, you know, diversity within the office, whether that’s gender or background or nationality or heritage.
And certainly, the boss had to pick the crew for this flight that he had available, that had the skill sets that he needed.
But certainly just look at our ISS missions where we had our recent crews with Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers as the commander and pilot. So, the office gets what it needs when it needs it and we’ll certainly have all these other people that you mentioned or female military test pilots or just other female astronauts that will be picking up on the fall on Artemis missions."
“We’re here to carry the fire so that we can hand off the torch to them.”