NASA Announces Artemis 2 Lunar Mission Backup Astronaut Andre Douglas to Fly to 2025 Lunar Launch

NASA has a backup astronaut ready to take part in the first human mission to the moon in more than 50 years, which won’t take off until 2025.

NASA astronaut André Douglas will serve as a backup for the three American astronauts on the Artemis 2 moon flight, the U.S. space agency (CSA) announced today. Douglas will join Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover and Mission Specialist Christina Koch. Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who is also an Artemis 2 mission specialist, already has a backup: CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons.

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“I’ve always been fascinated by new things. I like to develop things,” Douglas told Space.com in March of the Artemis program, which aims to send astronauts to the surface of the moon for the first time since 1972. “I really believe in pushing yourself, understanding what your true potential is: both me as an individual, (and) in each of us as a species.”

“This is the perfect place to push those boundaries,” he said.

Douglas was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in 2021 and was granted full astronaut status in March of this year after successfully completing his training. Prior to joining the agency, he served in the U.S. Coast Guard in numerous roles and earned several postdoctoral degrees in technical fields ranging from naval architecture to systems engineering.

Just before being selected as an astronaut, Douglas was a senior staff member at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), where he worked on several major space missions. “It was a very special time,” Douglas said.

an astronaut in a spacesuit at night. he looks carefully at a plastic bag that contains a sample inside

NASA astronaut Andre Douglas, also a backup astronaut for the Artemis 2 lunar mission, examines a geological sample he collected during a simulated moonwalk. The excursion took place at night in the San Francisco Volcanic Field in northern Arizona on May 16, 2024. (Photo credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel)

He notably served as a fault management engineer for NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a historic mission that was the first to successfully change the orbit of an asteroid around a larger asteroid after a deliberate collision in 2022.

“I was writing scripts for a software project to put the spacecraft into a safe mode, in case something went wrong,” Douglas said, noting that the mission was “very impressive” because it demonstrated that kinetic planetary defense against dangerous asteroids was potentially feasible.

In addition, Douglas worked on a major instrument for the Mars Moon Exploration (MMX) mission, which is scheduled to fly to the Red Planet in late 2026. The instrument is called MEGANE (Mars-moon Exploration with Gamma Ray and Neutrons) and will support a major objective of the mission, namely the study of the composition of Phobos and Deimos, the two moons of Mars.

Related: Helping build instrument for Japan’s Mars mission is ‘special moment’ for NASA’s newest astronaut (exclusive)

an illustration of a spaceship showing it passing an asteroid

An illustration of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, as it approaches its target moon around the asteroid Didymos. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL)

In May, Douglas even tried out moonwalk simulations in the field: He worked for a week at the San Francisco Volcano Field near Flagstaff, Arizona, alongside NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, testing updated spacesuits in the moon-like desert area in both day and night conditions.

“André’s educational background and extensive operational experience in his various jobs prior to joining NASA are clear evidence of his commitment to supporting this mission,” Joe Acaba, chief astronaut at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in the agency’s statement about the selection of the Artemis 2 replacement.

“He has excelled in his astronaut candidate training and technical missions,” Acaba added, “and we are confident he will continue to do so as NASA’s backup crew member for Artemis 2.”

Artemis 2 draws on a diverse crew: Glover, Koch and Hansen will be the first black person, the first woman and the first non-American to orbit the moon, respectively.

Earlier this year, the mission’s launch was pushed back nine months to September 2025 to allow for additional testing of the heat shield, among other critical components. Artemis 3, which is scheduled to land, isn’t expected to land until 2026.

In interviews with Space.com in May, three Artemis 2 crew members (Koch was unavailable) stressed that development missions must move at the pace of safety and learning, and that meeting schedules is not the goal.

“Ultimately,” Hansen told Space.com at the time, “I think it’s also important to recognize that we’re never going to be able to reduce this risk to zero. We’re going to learn everything we can in our testing facilities and in what science can accomplish in the field. And then, ultimately, we’re always going to have an unknown risk that we’re going to have to accept.”

“But that’s part of space exploration.”