The four astronauts assigned to NASA's Artemis III mission completed water survival training at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory near Johnson Space Center, the agency announced Tuesday, Sept. 8.

Commander Randy Bresnik, Pilot Luca Parmitano, and Mission Specialists Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas practiced open-water survival techniques for emergency scenarios after splashdown. The exercises included exiting an Orion spacecraft mockup submerged in the NBL pool and using survival gear stowed aboard the capsule.

NASA photos credited to NASA/James Blair showed the crew in an inflatable raft with two instructors before training began. In other images, Rubio floated in the water while being prepared for a hoist. Bresnik and Parmitano sat in an inflatable raft after leaving the Orion mockup, and Douglas was pulled from the pool wearing a tether and harness.

The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) sits at the Sonny Carter Training Facility near JSC. Its pool stretches 202 feet long, 102 feet wide and 40 feet deep, holding 6.2 million gallons of water. According to NASA's crew operations page, the NBL surface supports water surface operations training for both crew and rescue personnel.

Water survival is the latest checkpoint in a training schedule that started in June 2026, when the crew began familiarization inside a full-scale Orion mockup at Johnson's Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. NASA named the four-person crew on June 9 at JSC's Teague Auditorium. Douglas previously served as a backup crew member on Artemis II, which flew four astronauts around the Moon on April 1.

Artemis III will be the program's second crewed mission. NASA restructured the flight plan in February 2026, shifting the crewed lunar landing to Artemis IV. Artemis III will instead test docking of the Orion spacecraft with two commercial lunar landers in low Earth orbit, requiring three separate rocket launches: SLS carrying Orion, Blue Origin's New Glenn and SpaceX's Starship.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Aug. 14 he was "extremely confident" the agency could launch Artemis III in 2027. Florida Today reported on Aug. 21 that Isaacman pegged the launch window as early as June 2027, with the SLS rocket rolling out to Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39B for a wet dress test before year's end.

The next major program milestone is that rollout. No specific date has been announced.