NASA is pressing ahead with Artemis moon program revisions to give the agency its best shot at a lunar landing in 2028 using a lander built by either Elon Musk's SpaceX or Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, depending on which one testing indicates is the right choice, officials said Friday. The strategy is intended to provide an alternative path to an Artemis IV landing near the moon's south pole if either company runs into supply chain problems, significant technical trouble, or other issues that might trigger major delays.
The Artemis III flight will require coordinated launches of three of the world's most powerful rockets in quick succession: Blue Origin's New Glenn, SpaceX's Super Heavy-Starship, and NASA's Space Launch System. It will also require management of separate rendezvous maneuvers enabling NASA's Orion crew capsule to dock with both test landers.
The astronauts first will rendezvous and dock with Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 spacecraft, open hatches and float inside to test life support, communications and other critical systems. After two days, the crew will undock and fly the Orion to the SpaceX Starship stage, docking at the top of the big rocket using a passive docking mechanism. The otherwise "off-the-shelf" Starship will not be equipped with a crew cabin and the astronauts will not be able to enter the spacecraft.
But Parsons said SpaceX already has extensive experience with life support systems, communications and navigation procedures using its Crew and Cargo Dragon spacecraft, and is making solid progress getting the Starship moon lander variant ready for flight. Even with an off-the-shelf Starship for Artemis III, he said NASA will still gain valuable experience bringing the SpaceX and Orion spacecraft together and learning how the much smaller Orion capsule interacts with the much larger Starship.
Depending on how those flights go, NASA will have a better idea of the path forward toward the Artemis IV moon landing mission. "We intend to wait as long as possible to make a decision about which provider is ultimately going to provide (a lander to carry) the first American astronauts back to the moon in 2028," Parsons said. "We have dedicated teams working hand in hand with both providers, marching along the way, doing everything we can to (assist)." "Regardless of who goes first," he added, "both providers are planning for lunar landing missions in 2028."
NASA is in a self-declared space race with China, which plans to land "taikonauts" on the moon by 2030. NASA wants to get there first, to explore the lunar south pole region where ice deposits might be accessible to provide rocket fuel, air and water, and to establish a moon base in the 2030s for long-duration astronaut stays. Regardless of which lander is used for the Artemis IV mission, Parsons said NASA will launch its astronauts to space using the SLS rocket and Orion crew capsule. How the astronauts will get to the moon depends on which lander is being used.
For a SpaceX Starship landing mission, the company will launch three versions of the upper stage used with the Super Heavy booster: a propellant depot, a tanker and the lander itself. All three will use almost all of their supercold methane and liquid oxygen propellants just getting to low-Earth orbit. For a moon mission, SpaceX will have to launch multiple tanker flights to fill up the depot's tanks. The depot, in turn, will provide the propellants needed by the lander to break out of Earth orbit and head for the moon.
When the tanker flights are almost complete, an Orion capsule, launched by an SLS rocket, will dock with the waiting Starship lander. The lander then will boost both spacecraft to the moon. Once docked in lunar orbit, two astronauts will descend to the surface in the lander and carry out several moonwalks before blasting off to rendezvous with the Orion, which will carry the crew back to Earth.
For a Blue Origin moon landing, the company will launch three "transfer stages" using its New Glenn rocket, followed by the launch of the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander. The transfer stages will dock with the lander and boost it to orbit around the moon. An SLS rocket will launch an Orion crew capsule directly to the moon for a rendezvous and docking. Two astronauts then will move into the lander and a transfer stage will drop it into a lower lunar orbit. The lander will descend to touchdown and, after surface operations are complete, blast off to rendezvous with the Orion, which will carry the astronauts back to Earth.
The 2028 target landing date assumes SpaceX and/or Blue Origin can demonstrate reliable, rapid-fire launches of heavy-lift rockets, large-scale in-space refueling in Earth orbit and the ability to safely land on an uncertain surface and in poor lighting. Both companies are required to launch successful unpiloted moon landings before a flight carrying astronauts will be allowed. For its part, SpaceX has launched 13 suborbital Super Heavy-Starship test flights since 2023 and just one, the most recent, putting a Starship into orbit. But Musk told investors earlier this week the company will be launching multiple Super Heavy-Starships per week by the end of 2027 using launch pads in Texas and Florida.
"We expect Starship to fly weekly at some point in the first half next year, and then (in the) second half of next year twice weekly, or maybe even more frequently than that," he said. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the first large-scale in-orbit refueling demonstration is planned for "early next year." Blue Origin is still recovering from a catastrophic launch pad explosion of its New Glenn rocket in May that destroyed the booster and heavily damaged its launch pad. A new pad is being built and Blue Origin expects to resume flights late this year or in early 2027 and to send two unpiloted Blue Moon Mark 1 landers to the lunar surface by the end of next year.
"What we are undertaking is ambitious," said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. "It's extraordinarily difficult, and years of decisions, both within and beyond the walls of this agency, have cost us time and resources that we never had to spare. But the agency we are reinvigorating, and the extraordinary vehicles our industry partners are building, are worth every bit of that effort. This will not be a repeat of the flags and footprints (of the Apollo program). "These vehicles are being designed to dramatically reduce the cost of delivering mass to orbit and to the moon to support longer surface operations, enable more frequent astronaut missions, and transform what we see as a small scientific outpost into something that may one day resemble a city on the lunar surface."
He concluded his remarks by saying, "When the history books look back on this time, the politics over which rocket and landers carried us to the moon, how long it took, and at what cost will be a footnote compared to all that followed. That when the time came, the Artemis generation chose to go. And we went."
Michael H. Drucker
