At Least 15 Starship Launches Needed to Execute Artemis III Lunar Landing

SpaceX will need to launch at least 15 Starships to execute the Artemis III lunar landing NASA said today. Starship cannot fly directly to the Moon, but must refuel in Earth orbit before setting out for deep space. The Starship Human Landing System is just one vehicle requiring a single launch, but adding in all the launches needed for the fuel depot takes the total required into the “high teens.”

Lakiesha Hawkins, Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator for NASA’s Moon to Mars program, updated a NASA advisory committee this morning on the status of upcoming Artemis missions. Artemis I, an uncrewed flight test, was successfully accomplished last year. Artemis II, a test flight with a crew around the Moon, is planned for the end of next year.

Artemis III is the mission that will return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo program.  NASA awarded SpaceX a contract in 2021 to provide the Human Landing System, or HLS, for that mission. Starship is still under development with a second orbital flight test scheduled for tomorrow.

The contract with NASA requires SpaceX to conduct an uncrewed test flight to the lunar surface prior to Artemis III to demonstrate it can safely land on the Moon, although it does not have to prove it can lift off. That flight is supposed to take place next year in advance of the Artemis III mission in late 2025, although many are skeptical those dates can be met.

SpaceX is building two launch sites for Starship, one in Texas and one in Florida. All the Starship test flights to date including the first orbital flight test on April 20, 2023 took off from Starbase in Boca Chica, TX and tomorrow’s launch will too. Anticipating a high launch rate, SpaceX is already constructing the second site at NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A, which it leases from NASA. SpaceX already has a launch pad there for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. The Starship pad is adjacent to it.

Hawkins was asked whether the Starship HLS would take off from Texas or Florida. She replied both because of the number of launches required to fill the fuel depot — propellant aggregation — and they have to take place in a short period of time because of boil off associated with the cryogenic fuel.

“One of things that’s going to be pretty complex and challenging about the Starship lander is that there’s going to be quite a number of tankers that will need to aggregate and send fuel up to the depot. And in order to be able to meet the schedule that is required, as well as managing boil off and so forth with the fuel, there’s gonna need to be a rapid succession of launches of fuel.” — Lakiesha Hawkins

That means using both Starbase and Kennedy Space Center. “I think it’s on a 6-day rotation” and “it’s in the high teens right now in terms of the number of launches.”

The launch of the lander itself is about half-way through that sequence.

SpaceX’s plan for refuelling Starship at an Earth-orbit fuel depot has been known since the beginning, but NASA and SpaceX have demurred on specifying how many launches would be required.

All those launches are for the lander only.  The crew will travel to the Moon in NASA’s Orion capsule launched by NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. Unlike Starship, SLS can send a spacecraft directly to lunar orbit. No refueling is needed, but SLS is expendable, not reusable like Starship.

The Orion capsule and Starship HLS will dock in lunar orbit. The crew will transfer into Starship for the journey down to and back from the surface where they will redock with Orion for the trip home.

NASA chose Blue Origin as a second HLS provider beginning with the Artemis V mission later this decade.  It also requires in-space refueling although it will refuel closer to the Moon, not in Earth orbit.

Hawkins’ briefing was to the Human Exploration and Operations Committee of the NASA Advisory Council.

Committee chair Wayne Hale, a former space shuttle program manager, acknowledged “we’re all getting our heads around” how complex these new systems are compared to Apollo, but they are “essential” for sustained lunar exploration and the longer-term goal of sending humans to Mars. It is “perhaps a more complicated architecture than just repeating the Apollo one-and-done flags-and-footprints” model, but critical for long-term human exploration.

People ask what was wrong with Apollo and the thing that was wrong with Apollo is that it ended 50 years ago. This whole plan is around the idea that it’s going to be long term, it’s going to be sustainable. It’s not just a race to get there and put your flag down first, but to build an infrastrucuture and an architecture and to look to the future as you go places in the solar system. So of course it’s more complicated. — Wayne Hale

Hawkins’ Moon to Mars Program Office is part of the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.

Jim Free is still head of ESDMD although NASA announced Wednesday he will be moving up to be the top civil servant in the agency at the end of the year. His main message today was that they are making progress on all the Artemis missions, but will not launch the next one, Artemis II, until they are certain they are ready.

NASA is still trying to find the root cause of damage to Orion’s heat shield on the Artemis I mission when there was unexpected mechanical liberation of some of the Avcoat ablative shield. They expect to have a tentative root cause nailed down next spring, but they are being extremely vigilant on all the systems since this will be the first Orion to carry a crew.

“We are not gonna fly until we are ready to fly. Until we understand everything from Artemis I, the heat shield is the one thing that we’re still working through, everything we’re learning about Artemis II, from some of the things we’re learning as the vehicle comes together. We are not going to launch until we’re ready to launch.” — Jim Free

The same is true for Artemis III.  As he had said in other venues, a lot of work remains to be done not just on Starship, but lunar spacesuits as well.

One of the biggest challenges isn’t technical, but budgetary uncertainty. “Somebody asked me this week would I want more budget and I said sure, of course more budget would be great, but budget stability is something we could really benefit from,” Free said.

Like all government agencies funded by annual appropriations, NASA is working under a temporary Continuing Resolution until Congress completes action on the Commerce-Justice-Science bill that includes NASA or February 2 when the new CR expires for CJS. The CR holds NASA spending at its FY2023 level and there is great uncertainty as to what Congress will approve for FY2024.

Hale said budget stability has to be at the top of any programmatic risk assessment because of “how difficult it is to run a program when you don’t know how much money you’re gonna get in the next few months.”

This article has been updated.