NASA has another astronaut on standby for the first manned lunar mission in more than 50 years, scheduled to launch as early as 2025.
NASA astronaut Andre Douglas will serve as backup for three U.S. astronauts on the Artemis 2 lunar orbit flight, the agency announced today (July 3). Douglas will support commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Christina Koch. Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who is the mission specialist on Artemis 2, already has a backup: astronaut Jenni Gibbons, also with CSA.
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“I’ve always been interested in new things. I love developing things,” Douglas told Space.com in March about the Artemis program, which aims to send astronauts to the surface of the moon later this decade for the first time since 1972. “We really believe in pushing ourselves, in figuring out what our true potential is: both as individuals and as individuals. [and] “It’s in all of us as a species.”
“This is a perfect place for us to push the boundaries,” he said.
Douglas was selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate in 2021 and was promoted to full astronaut status in March of this year after completing his training. Before joining the agency, he served in multiple roles with the U.S. Coast Guard and earned postdoctoral degrees in technical fields ranging from naval architecture to systems engineering.
Just before astronaut selection, Douglas was a senior professional staff member at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) working on several high-profile space missions. “It was my favorite time,” Douglas said.
For example, he was a defect management engineer on NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a historic mission that was the first to successfully change the orbit of an asteroid moonlet around a larger space rock after an intentional collision in 2022.
“I was writing scripts for a software project that would help put the spacecraft into safe mode in case of any anomalies,” Douglas said, adding that the mission was “very cool” in that it showed that kinetic planetary defenses against dangerous asteroids could potentially work.
Douglas also worked on a key instrument for the Mars Moon Exploration (MMX) mission, scheduled to fly to the Red Planet in late 2026. The instrument is called MEGANE (Mars-Moon Exploration with Gamma Rays and Neutrons) and will support a key mission goal of learning the composition of Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos.
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In May, Douglas even tried moonwalk simulations in the field: He and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins spent a week working at the San Francisco Volcanic Field near Flagstaff, Arizona, testing updated spacesuits in day and night conditions in the moon-like desert region.
“Andre’s educational background and extensive operational experience in a variety of jobs prior to joining NASA are clear evidence that he is ready to support this mission,” Joe Acaba, chief astronaut at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in the agency’s announcement of the Artemis 2 backup selection.
“The astronaut candidate demonstrated excellence in his training and technical duties,” Merak added, “and we are confident he will continue to do so as NASA’s backup crew member for Artemis 2.”
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Artemis 2 is strengthened by the diverse experiences of its crew: Glover, Koch and Hansen will be the first black, first woman and first non-American, respectively, to orbit the Moon.
Earlier this year, the mission’s liftoff was delayed by nine months to September 2025 for extra tests on the heat shield, among other critical elements. A landing effort, Artemis 3, is not expected before 2026.
In interviews with Space.com in May, three of the Artemis 2 crew members (Koch was unavailable) emphasized that developmental missions must proceed at the pace of safety and learning, and that keeping to schedules is not the goal.
“At the end of the day,” Hansen told Space.com at the time, “I think it’s also important to recognize that we’re never going to get this risk to zero. We’re going to learn everything we can in our test facilities, and [in what] what science can accomplish in the field. And then ultimately, we’re going to have some unknown risks that we have to accept.
“But that’s part of space exploration.”