NASA Safety Panel Estimates Significant Delays for Starship HLS

NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel is warning that SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) could be “years late” for the Artemis III mission that is supposed to take place in mid-2027. The assessment comes after three ASAP members visited SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, TX and met with top SpaceX officials. While they were quite impressed with SpaceX’s manufacturing and operations tempo, they nonetheless found the schedule for HLS is “significantly challenged.”

ASAP holds private quarterly meetings with NASA and other officials followed by a telephonic public briefing to share findings and recommendations. On Friday, ASAP reported on their third-quarter 2025 meeting that was held at NASA Headquarters between July 20 and July 30.

A week after that meeting, ASAP members Paul Hill, Kent Rominger and Charlie Precourt visited Starbase. Hill is a former Director of Mission Operations and former flight director at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Rominger and Precourt are former NASA astronauts.

Hill said their primary task was to assess Starship HLS readiness to meet the mid-2027 date for Artemis III, the mission that will return U.S. astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo era. In 2021, NASA selected SpaceX to build the first HLS for the Artemis program. At the time the goal was a landing in 2024, though it was widely considered unrealistic and has, in fact, subsequently slipped.

Starship HLS is essential for Artemis III. No other landers capable of putting astronauts on the lunar surface exist right now, although Blue Origin won a second NASA HLS contract and is building Blue Moon MK2 for later Artemis missions.

Hill reported that they met with SpaceX’s Vice President of Starship engineering Bill Riley, Starship HLS program manager Aarti Matthews, and Vice President of Build and Reliability Bill Gerstenmaier.  They came away very impressed with SpaceX’s “multi-faceted, self-perpetuating genius” for an “overall strategy that directly increases manufacturing and flight operations reliability.” But as impressed as they were, they consider the chances of Starship HLS being ready for 2027 as highly questionable.

The HLS schedule is significantly challenged and [in] our estimation could be years late for a 2027 Artemis III Moon landing. On-orbit cryo-propellant transfer is critical to the HLS mission and its successful development is required for Artemis III. And at the same time there are threats to cryo-transfer. First, timely development of  Starship Version 3, which is first scheduled to fly next month. A reliable flight demonstration of the Starship Version 3 tanker and depot configurations, both requiring significant upgrades. And then successful Raptor [engine] Version 3 performance and reliability improvements.   — Paul Hill

Cryo-transfer refers to the need for Starship to refuel in Earth orbit before heading to the Moon or other deep space destinations. As powerful as it is, Starship can only reach Earth orbit unlike NASA’s Space Launch System that can go directly from liftoff to lunar orbit. SpaceX plans to build fuel depots in Earth orbit that will be filled by Starship tankers.  Starship uses cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen as propellant. Cryogenic propellants experience boil-off so the number of tankers needed to fill the depots is unknown and transferring cryogenic propellants in microgravity has never been done.

Hill also drew attention to what they view as competing priorities for SpaceX between its satellite Internet broadband Starlink business and Starship HLS.  The new Starship Version 3 will be needed to launch the new, more capable revenue-producing Starlink V3 satellites, and at the same time to create the fuel depots and Starship HLS.

In short, “the next six months of Starship launches will be telling about the likelihood of HLS flying crew in 2027 or by the end of the decade.”

Later, ASAP member Bill Bray, an independent consultant who spent 36 years in the Department of the Navy, reported on their meetings with NASA about the overall Moon-to-Mars program. He added that ASAP sees “the path for Artemis III and beyond as uncertain and a little murky, which is not good for the program safety and risk posture going forward.”

Bray noted that ASAP has been recommending since 2023 that NASA reevaluate the “high number of individual risks and mission firsts” associated with Artemis III and “consider reallocating” some of them to other missions as was done during Apollo. NASA has told them for some time they’re looking at it, but ASAP hasn’t seen a restructured approach yet. The delivery schedules both for Starship HLS and the lunar spacesuits being built by Axiom Space “are deemed aggressive” and “any delay in the delivery of these programs places the planned lunar landing in jeopardy of postponement.”

House and Senate Republicans and Democrats, and the White House, all are determined to get U.S. astronauts back on the Moon before China puts taikonauts there. Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy recently said “I’ll be damned” if China gets there before America gets back.  Duffy was reacting to comments by Jim Bridenstine, who headed NASA during the first Trump Administration when the Artemis program began, that Starship likely won’t be ready by 2027.

ASAP was created by Congress in 1968 following the 1967 Apollo 1 tragedy that killed NASA astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. It reports to Congress and the NASA Administrator.