Andre Douglas, MSE’12, will be one of four astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis III mission in 2027.
“My brain is going a mile a minute right now, but my heart is so warm. It is so full,” Douglas said during a NASA press conference where the crew was announced.
Douglas will be a mission specialist and it will be his first spaceflight. He was selected by NASA in the 2021 astronaut candidate class, and he previously served as a backup and closeout crew member for the agency’s Artemis II mission.
Douglas earned his bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy before coming to the University of Michigan. He earned two master’s degrees at U-M, and two other postgraduate degrees elsewhere.
NASA says the Artemis III mission will undertake a series of challenging tests in Earth orbit as an essential step toward Artemis IV, the agency’s crewed mission to the moon in 2028. Douglas will become the latest Wolverine to visit space. He joins other NASA astronauts David Scott, 1949-50, HDAS’71, James Irwin, MSE’57, HDSC’71, and Alfred Worden, MSE’63, HDAS’71, who were aboard the Apollo 15 mission, NASA’s fourth that landed on the moon. The Alumni Association later formed the U-M Club of the Moon to honor that crew.
Douglas thanked his parents, his wife, and had a special message to his children: “If you work hard, and think big, you can do just about anything you want to do.”
Jeremy Carroll is the director of content and creative strategy for the Alumni Association.
