NASA is relying on SpaceX’s Starship to put astronauts back on the Moon, and the newest version just flew

NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the lunar surface depends on a vehicle that has not yet completed the missions it needs to fly, and the private company building it just put a dramatically upgraded version through its first real test. SpaceX’s Starship, selected years ago as the lander that will carry Artemis astronauts down to the Moon, needs several more successful flights before it can be trusted with a crew.

Why NASA Chose A Commercial Rocket For The Landing

Rather than building its own lunar lander the way it did during the Apollo era, NASA opted to buy transportation as a service from private companies for its return to the Moon, awarding contracts to develop new landers instead of designing and operating the hardware itself.

That decision put SpaceX in charge of developing Starship variants for Artemis landing missions under a contract NASA has valued at roughly $4.05 billion for two vehicles, and the agency later added Blue Origin as a second lander provider for a subsequent mission, a deliberate hedge against relying on a single company’s rocket for the only way to get astronauts down to the surface and back. NASA’s own Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule carry astronauts from Earth to lunar orbit, where they transfer to Starship for the actual descent to the surface.

Artemis II Proved The Crew Half Of The Plan

Before any lander gets tested with people aboard, NASA needed to prove astronauts could safely fly to the Moon and back, which is what Artemis II accomplished with a crewed flight around the Moon earlier this year. That mission did not attempt a landing, but it validated the Orion capsule and life-support systems that will carry the Artemis III crew on the front half of their trip.

With that milestone cleared, the remaining open question for a landing mission is no longer whether astronauts can survive the trip to lunar orbit, but whether Starship can reliably make the final descent and ascent once they get there.

Orion’s flight also verified systems that have nothing to do with the lander directly but still matter for the overall mission, including the capsule’s heat shield performance during reentry and the life-support systems that keep a crew alive for the days-long trip each way. Those results give NASA a validated baseline for the parts of the architecture it controls directly, narrowing the program’s remaining risk down mostly to the commercially built lander.

A Bigger, Redesigned Starship Just Flew

SpaceX’s newest Starship configuration, known as Version 3, flew for the first time in a test launch from a new pad at the company’s Starbase site, a flight that debuted a significantly reworked vehicle rather than an incremental tweak of earlier versions. Version 3 is the design SpaceX intends to evolve into the Human Landing System variant NASA has contracted for, making the flight a foundational step rather than a routine test.

Getting a substantially redesigned rocket off the pad successfully does not mean the harder milestones are finished. Landing on the Moon requires Starship to demonstrate capabilities no version of the vehicle has yet performed in an operational setting, including long-duration flight in space and transferring propellant between two Starships in orbit.

The Propellant-Transfer Problem Still Ahead

Because Starship launches without enough fuel remaining to fly all the way to the Moon and back, NASA’s plan requires SpaceX to launch a series of tanker flights that transfer propellant to a Starship lander waiting in Earth orbit before it heads to the Moon. That orbital refueling technique has never been performed at this scale by any spacecraft, and NASA has identified it as one of the highest-risk items standing between the current test program and a crewed lunar landing.

SpaceX and NASA have both pointed to additional flights this year and next as the way to prove out that refueling sequence, since every other part of the mission architecture depends on being able to fill a lander’s tanks in orbit before it descends.

Transferring cryogenic propellant between two spacecraft in orbit involves managing fuel that boils off readily in the vacuum of space, docking two large vehicles precisely enough to connect fuel lines, and moving enormous quantities of propellant in a fraction of the time a similar transfer would take on the ground. Engineers have tested pieces of that process in smaller-scale demonstrations, but nothing yet at the volume Starship’s lunar architecture requires.

Testing Landers Before Committing A Crew

NASA has also said it plans to observe uncrewed test landings from both SpaceX and Blue Origin before putting astronauts aboard either company’s lander, a cautious sequencing decision meant to catch problems on a robotic flight rather than a crewed one. That approach adds time to the schedule but reflects lessons from earlier spaceflight programs where skipping uncrewed validation steps carried consequences NASA has been reluctant to repeat.

How closely SpaceX’s test flight cadence keeps pace with that plan will determine whether Artemis III’s landing date holds or slips again, a question that has already moved more than once as Starship’s development timeline has run longer than originally planned.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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