NASA Safety Panel Estimates Important Delays for Starship HLS – SpaceCoverageOnline.com

NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel is warning that SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) might be “years late” for the Artemis III mission that’s alleged to happen in mid-2027. The evaluation comes after three ASAP members visited SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, TX and met with high SpaceX officers. While they had been fairly impressed with SpaceX’s manufacturing and operations tempo, they nonetheless discovered the schedule for HLS is “significantly challenged.”

ASAP holds personal quarterly conferences with NASA and different officers adopted by a telephonic public briefing to share findings and proposals. On Friday, ASAP reported on their third-quarter 2025 assembly that was held at NASA Headquarters between July 20 and July 30.

Per week after that assembly, 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 mentioned their major job was to evaluate Starship HLS readiness to satisfy the mid-2027 date for Artemis III, the mission that may return U.S. astronauts to the lunar floor for the primary time for the reason that Apollo period. In 2021, NASA chosen SpaceX to construct the primary HLS for the Artemis program. At the time the objective was a touchdown in 2024, although it was extensively thought-about unrealistic and has, actually, subsequently slipped.

Starship HLS is crucial for Artemis III. No different landers able to placing astronauts on the lunar floor exist proper now, though Blue Origin gained a second NASA HLS contract and is constructing 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 supervisor Aarti Matthews, and Vice President of Build and Reliability Bill Gerstenmaier.  They got here 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 had been, they think about the possibilities of Starship HLS being prepared for 2027 as extremely questionable.

The HLS schedule is considerably challenged and [in] our estimation might be years late for a 2027 Artemis III Moon touchdown. On-orbit cryo-propellant switch is vital to the HLS mission and its profitable improvement is required for Artemis III. And on the identical time there are threats to cryo-transfer. First, well timed improvement of  Starship Version 3, which is first scheduled to fly subsequent month. A dependable flight demonstration of the Starship Version 3 tanker and depot configurations, each requiring vital upgrades. And then profitable Raptor [engine] Version 3 efficiency and reliability enhancements.   — Paul Hill

Cryo-transfer refers back to the want for Starship to refuel in Earth orbit earlier than heading to the Moon or different deep area locations. As highly effective as it’s, Starship can solely attain Earth orbit not like NASA’s Space Launch System that may go immediately from liftoff to lunar orbit. SpaceX plans to construct gas depots in Earth orbit that shall be crammed by Starship tankers.  Starship makes use of cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen as propellant. Cryogenic propellants expertise boil-off so the variety of tankers wanted to fill the depots is unknown and transferring cryogenic propellants in microgravity has by no means been executed.

Hill additionally drew consideration to what they view as competing priorities for SpaceX between its satellite tv for pc Internet broadband Starlink enterprise and Starship HLS.  The new Starship Version 3 shall be wanted to launch the brand new, extra succesful revenue-producing Starlink V3 satellites, and on the identical time to create the gas depots and Starship HLS.

In quick, “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 unbiased guide who spent 36 years within the Department of the Navy, reported on their conferences with NASA in regards to the total 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 famous that ASAP has been recommending since 2023 that NASA reevaluate the “high number of individual risks and mission firsts” related to Artemis III and “consider reallocating” a few of them to different missions as was executed throughout Apollo. NASA has instructed them for a while they’re it, however ASAP hasn’t seen a restructured strategy but. The supply schedules each for Starship HLS and the lunar spacesuits being constructed 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 decided to get U.S. astronauts again on the Moon earlier than China places taikonauts there. Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy just lately mentioned “I’ll be damned” if China will get there earlier than America will get again.  Duffy was reacting to feedback by Jim Bridenstine, who headed NASA through the first Trump Administration when the Artemis program started, that Starship doubtless gained’t be prepared 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 reviews to Congress and the NASA Administrator.

Last Updated: Sep 22, 2025 12:20 am ET