In April 2026, NASA's Artemis II mission carried four astronauts around the Moon, the first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit since 1972. The crewed missions that follow are meant to build on what that flight proved. NASA lists Andre Douglas, an African American engineer and astronaut, as a mission specialist assigned to Artemis III, a planned low-Earth-orbit mission to test spacecraft rendezvous and docking.
His preparation began on the water. Douglas studied mechanical engineering at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, then served in the Coast Guard as a naval architect and salvage engineer. Naval architects design and evaluate vessels; salvage engineers work on ships that have been damaged, sunk or disabled. Both jobs turn on understanding how structures hold up under stress in conditions that leave little room for error.
From the Coast Guard he moved to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where he contributed to maritime robotics, planetary defense and space exploration missions. The laboratory's work ranges from underwater robots to the study of objects in space, and engineers there often carry a single problem, such as how a machine should perceive and navigate its surroundings, across several very different environments.
NASA selected Douglas for its astronaut candidate class in 2021, the same year he completed a doctorate in systems engineering at George Washington University. Systems engineering treats a spacecraft or mission as a whole, coordinating its many parts so they work together, and the degree was completed as his astronaut training began.
He also mentors young people through FIRST robotics and Junior Achievement, programs that introduce students to engineering, teamwork and the practical work of building and running projects.
A rendezvous and docking test is a rehearsal with stakes. Two spacecraft meeting in orbit must match speed and position with precision, and crewed lunar missions depend on that skill. Testing it in low Earth orbit, close to home, is how NASA checks the systems before crews rely on them farther out. Douglas's assignment to that test places his maritime engineering background inside the sequence NASA is building toward a return to the lunar surface.
