Air Force test pilot chosen as Artemis III’s ‘ultimate wingman’

NASA has selected Air Force Col. Bob “Farmer” Hines as the alternate crew member for Artemis III, positioning the veteran test pilot to train alongside the prime crew and be ready to occupy any seat if called upon. The assignment comes as the agency readies one of its most complex human spaceflight efforts since the Apollo era.

“It is incredibly humbling, because I don’t think we’ve ever [had one person identified as a backup for every spot on a crew] before in NASA,” Hines said. “To have the organization put that trust in me is really humbling. There’s a lot of responsibility, and I certainly take that seriously.”

Hines, who has more than 4,000 flight hours in 50 aircraft types, will be required to maintain proficiency across multiple roles as training ramps up. “At least early on in the training, my focus will be on the skills that the commander is learning,” Hines explained. “Then I just need to make sure I’m branching off and understanding all the other crews’ roles and responsibilities as well.”

Artemis III is targeted for launch in 2027 and will involve intricate operations, including docking between the Orion spacecraft and new commercial lunar landers—an early proving ground for a subsequent crewed lunar landing planned for 2028. Hines said the developmental nature of the program plays directly to a test pilot’s strengths. “We have the Orion spacecraft, and we’ll be working with two different companies for new lunar landers—it’ll be the first time they will have flown,” said Hines. “We’ll have to learn about those, and then, as we look forward to future Artemis missions, we’ll have new spacesuits to work on the moon with. Those are developmental programs—lunar rovers, habitats, tools, all the things that we’ll be working with on the surface of the moon. All those things will be new and continuously changing, and so that skill set of test and development is valuable.”

Beyond his Air Force pedigree, Hines brings recent spaceflight experience. He spent 170 days in orbit and served as pilot of SpaceX’s Crew-4 mission to the International Space Station in 2022. “Being familiar with the logistics of spaceflight will be really helpful, understanding the training profile, but the mission itself is completely different,” Hines said. “On the space station, you’re living and working there for a long duration. It’s more akin to a military deployment. Probably the most valuable part from Space Station will be the interpersonal, inter-crew skills and dynamics, and understanding that in the spaceflight environment. In the military, we know how important it is to work in a team and managing those team dynamics.”

Hines framed Artemis as a return to NASA’s pioneering roots and underscored the prominence of flight-test expertise in early missions. “The amazing thing about Artemis is truly stepping back into exploration, which NASA made its name doing, and exploration, by its very nature, is doing things that no one’s ever done before,” said Hines. “We certainly need all the other skill sets too, but for these early missions, test pilots are front and center. You’ll notice on the prime crew we have two test pilots sitting in the front seats with Randy Bresnik and Luca Parmitano.”

His path to the Artemis team traces back to 1997, when he graduated from Boston University with a degree in aerospace engineering, then commissioned through Officer Training School. His operational career includes 76 combat missions in the F-15E Strike Eagle and two other aircraft types.