// NASA BREAKING NEWS — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
NASA, Partners Accelerate Lander Development for 2028 Moon Missions
As NASA returns humans to the lunar surface and establishes a long-term presence on our closest celestial neighbor, the agency and commercial human landing system providers Blue Origin and SpaceX have streamlined the designs and changed both concepts of operations for its future crewed landers.
Since NASA established initial contracts with Blue Origin and SpaceX for crewed missions to the Moon, the agency has redefined Artemis III to demonstrate rendezvous and docking capabilities between test versions of landers from each provider and the agency’s Orion spacecraft in low Earth orbit next year. In parallel, the companies are also developing crew and cargo versions of their landers for near-term Artemis missions.
“We are executing President Trump’s National Space Policy to complete the long-awaited return of American astronauts to the lunar surface in 2028 and establish a Moon Base,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “We have a proven foundation in SLS and Orion, along with two lunar landers in development with Blue Origin and SpaceX. But NASA has no intention of sitting idly by as all the pieces come together. That is not how Apollo succeeded, and it is not how the near-impossible is achieved. NASA is energized, our core capabilities are being rebuilt, our machine shops are running 24/7, and our experts are in the field attacking the critical path. We are building a Super Bowl-caliber team to safely achieve these objectives and everything that comes next.”
For the initial crewed missions to the Moon, Artemis astronauts will launch in the agency’s Orion spacecraft on top of the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During each Artemis mission, a commercial human landings system will link up with Orion before taking two crew members to the lunar surface while two remain aboard Orion. To accelerate development toward a 2028 landing, the Artemis landers and Orion will no longer rendezvous in a near-rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon and instead meet up in an orbit that differs for each partner, informed by their systems.
Both companies are required to perform an uncrewed demonstration mission with their crewed landers prior to the near-term Artemis crewed missions to the Moon. NASA will certify lander systems prior to the crewed missions to ensure safety and mission success.
SpaceX continues to plan for an in-space propellant aggregation approach to transfer super cold, or cryogenic, liquid propellant in space. The company will launch multiple versions of Starship to low Earth orbit prior to the launch of the Starship Human Landing System (HLS) from Florida. Similar to a gas station on Earth, the series of propellant “tanker” Starships in low Earth orbit will transfer propellant to the waiting “depot” Starship. The depot Starship will ultimately fuel the Starship lander for its journey to the Moon.
Under the revised operations, Starship HLS will await Orion and its crew in Earth orbit. The lander and Orion will rendezvous and dock in Earth orbit, then the Starship lander will perform a trans-lunar injection burn to send the combined lander and Orion stack to low lunar orbit. NASA is working to modify Orion to enable Starship to push it to the Moon. The lander will bring two crew members to the lunar surface for several days before delivering them back to Orion for the ride back to Earth.
Propellant aggregation in low Earth orbit allows for flexibility in the crew launch timing on SLS, while a trans-lunar injection burn performed by the Starship lander will enable direct access to low lunar orbit. This new concept of operations using low lunar orbit will significantly lower the amount of propellant Starship needs to aggregate in space while reducing the amount of time it can take for astronauts leaving the Moon’s surface in Starship to link back up with Orion. SpaceX will demonstrate the propellant aggregation approach during the uncrewed demonstration mission.
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