Artemis 3 astronaut test flight will be 'one of the most highly complex missions NASA has undertaken.' These new details reveal why.

We just learned a little more about NASA's next Artemis mission. The agency dropped a few details on Wednesday (May 13) about Artemis 3 , a crewed mission that will test rendezvous and docking operations with one or more lunar landers close to home. "While this is a mission to Earth orbit, it is an important stepping stone to successfully landing on the moon with Artemis 4," Jeremy Parsons, Moon to Mars acting assistant deputy administrator at NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C., said in a statement on Wednesday . "Artemis 3 is one of the most highly complex missions NASA has undertaken." We already knew the broad outlines of Artemis 3: It will use NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to send four astronauts to orbit aboard the Orion spacecraft. Orion will then rendezvous and dock with one or both of the Artemis program's privately developed lunar landers — SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon . This architecture was announced in late February . It's a big departure from the original Artemis 3 plan, which would have used one of the landers to put astronauts down near the moon's south pole. NASA is still working to define the details of Artemis 3, but the agency has made some progress, as Wednesday's announcement shows. …