NASA plans Earth-orbit Artemis III mission with Starship docking

NASA plans to fly Artemis III as a crewed low-Earth orbit mission in summer 2027, launching four astronauts from Florida in the Orion spacecraft atop the Space Launch System after shifting the flight away from a first crewed lunar landing.

The crew consists of NASA Commander Randy Bresnik, mission specialists Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio, and European Space Agency pilot Luca Parmitano, and the mission will last about two weeks. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman revealed the schedule change in February, explaining that the program was not ready for a lunar landing; under the revised plan, the first crewed landing moves to Artemis IV in 2028.

Isaacman said the assembly and integration schedule is now half as long and pointed to a year-end tanking test ahead of the launch. He also described Artemis III as a demonstration that will bring together three of the world’s most powerful rockets alongside Orion and the two human landing systems in development.

NASA aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface by the end of 2028, and may conduct another crewed lunar landing on Artemis V later in 2028, depending on progress and future decisions. SpaceX is targeting an uncrewed Starship lunar landing demonstration in late 2027 ahead of Artemis IV, which would attempt to land two astronauts near the moon’s south pole, though NASA has not yet decided which lander to use.

Starship’s role in Artemis III covers only an orbital docking test. SpaceX plans to launch a standard Starship upper stage on the sixth day of the mission with a docking system and nosecone cover at the top but no crew cabin or life-support system, so astronauts cannot enter it. SpaceX will pull the vehicle from the assembly line with minimal modifications, distinguishing it from the eventual lunar lander variant.

On the eighth day, Orion will dock with Starship for two hours to test combined performance, because Orion was not originally designed for that configuration. SpaceX wants the two vehicles to link up in low-Earth orbit, after which Starship would provide propulsion to send them toward the moon rather than docking in lunar orbit.

Before the Starship linkup, Orion will dock first with Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander, and the crew will enter Blue Moon to perform systems tests while docked for two days. Blue Moon will allow astronauts to enter the lander, unlike SpaceX’s Starship configuration for Artemis III, and the Starship docking will last up to two hours with no crew entry.

Jeremy Parsons said the Artemis III demonstrations will provide critical data on docking forces, how the vehicles will push, and how they will work together, in remarks attributed to an October news conference. He described the Starship demonstration as shorter, about two hours, with no crew entry.

The Starship used for the Artemis III docking test will be Ship No. 42 off the production line and carries a reference to Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. NASA has compared Artemis III to Apollo 9, an often-overlooked mission half a century ago that provided a crucial check that the lunar lander would work as designed.

A central need before crewed lunar use is orbital propellant transfer. SpaceX plans to demonstrate the transfer of ultracold liquid methane and liquid oxygen between two Starships launched in quick succession, one from Texas and one from Florida, because Starship uses most of its propellant reaching orbit. Parsons called the demonstration a first-of-its-kind SpaceX mission.

Tanker Starships would fill an orbital depot, and the lunar-bound vehicle would replenish before traveling to the Moon, with cryogenic storage needed to limit warming and evaporation losses. By the time the upper-stage Ship reaches orbit, its tanks are almost empty, so SpaceX envisions an orbital gas station supplied by tanker Starships for moon or Mars missions.

Flight 15, the 15th Starship test flight, lifted off at 5:47 p.m. Eastern time on Friday from SpaceX’s Starbase site outside Brownsville, Texas, and headed eastward over the Gulf of Mexico. The Super Heavy booster separated about two minutes after liftoff but aborted its pad catch after detecting a guidance and navigation control problem, then performed a simulated landing over the Gulf that ended with a loud explosion.

The upper-stage Ship reached orbit about 170 miles above Earth and deployed 26 next-generation Starlink satellites, circling the planet for roughly 22 hours and about 14 trips before preparing to return to the launch site. SpaceX planned to catch the returning Ship at Starbase using the launch tower’s two mechanical arms, known as chopsticks, after re-entry and a hover beside the tower.

The attempt would have been the first-ever catch of the upper-stage Ship, planned for about 4:18 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, returning it to the South Texas launchpad rather than splashing down. Ship was to travel through the atmosphere faster than the speed of sound before steering it back to the tower. SpaceX reported in an overnight webcast update that heat-shield tiles protecting Ship’s underside were in good condition, based on camera data from the ground and two deployed Starlink satellites.

The flight canceled a planned double-catch attempt after the booster was diverted to the Gulf of Mexico water landing. SpaceX must wait for its next Starship test flight to recover all parts of the rocket in a single mission, and the canceled double-catch is a key step toward a fully reusable rocket. Full reusability depends on successfully catching both stages and reflighting them, a milestone not yet achieved.

A previous Starship test flight in September was the first to enter orbit around Earth and deployed 26 of SpaceX’s newest Starlink satellites, which are not yet operational. Flight 14 demonstrated an upper-stage engine restart for circular orbit and deorbit, but returned early to the Pacific after an upper-stage engine failed during ascent.

Starship is 407 feet tall and consists of a Super Heavy booster with 33 engines plus the upper-stage Ship, and SpaceX calls it the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, designed for full and rapid reusability like an aircraft. Starfactory, the company’s million-square-foot manufacturing facility in Texas, builds rockets more than 400 feet high and 30 feet wide on a floor divided roughly equally between booster and Ship production.

It takes seven to eight months to complete one booster or one Ship, but overlapping production lets SpaceX finish one booster every four weeks and one Ship every two weeks, said Danny Fain, director of booster production. Finished vehicles move to nearby tall buildings called megabays where crews install Raptor engines, and engine installation time has dropped from five to six hours per engine to 30 minutes.

About 8,000 people work on the Starbase campus on any given day, and Starbase has about 800 full-time residents, SpaceX employees. Starbase became an official city in May last year and includes a police department, a fire department, and a soon-to-open public library.

Flight 16 could be the first Starship launch from SpaceX’s revamped pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, because the Texas site is not sufficient for planned launch acceleration. Another Florida pad is under construction at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and a huge launch complex is planned in Louisiana.

SpaceX gave reporters a tour of its Starfactory facility in Texas on Friday but did not allow photographs or videos. Justin Styer, SpaceX senior director of Starship launch, said Starfactory operates more like a toy factory or automobile assembly line than a traditional aerospace factory using automotive mass-production methods.

The SpaceX factory in Hawthorne, California, makes Falcon 9 and originally served as a facility for airplane fuselages, while builders built the Texas Starbase site from the ground up. A giant globe of Mars hangs in the Starfactory lobby as a reminder of Elon Musk’s ultimate destination for Starship.

Dan Huot, a SpaceX commentator, said the company could command Starship to tumble into the atmosphere and splash down in the Pacific if flying over populated areas seems too risky. SpaceX gave a final go for the Starship catch attempt about an hour before the update, with backup splashdown options in the Pacific near Hawaii or the Gulf of Mexico if something went wrong.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop for air travel when Starship launched on Friday. Test-flight failures make it even more unlikely that NASA can meet its goal of landing astronauts on the moon in 2028, according to The New York Times.

Blue Origin is developing its own lunar lander, Blue Moon Mark 2, expected to stand approximately 52 feet tall and use three BE-7 engines. The company targets an uncrewed Blue Moon MK2 lunar landing demonstration in the first quarter of 2028, after MK1 missions under Commercial Lunar Payload Services beginning in early 2027.

The MK2 demonstration would test travel to the Moon, safe descent, and operation before NASA considers it for astronaut missions. Damage to Launch Complex 36 after a New Glenn-related incident in May added a challenge to Blue Origin’s schedule, with return to operations anticipated in late 2026 but possibly slipping into early 2027.

Experts offered differing views on the tower-catch method. Joseph Gonzalez of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign said catching both rocket parts and relaunching them offers a better chance to save a rocket for reuse than legs or parachutes, which add weight, fuel needs, or ocean recovery days. Gonzalez worked on the Artemis II mission and emphasized that time matters for rapid reusability.

Alistair John of the University of Sheffield said catching both stages remains distant, and the heat shield and engines must prove OK to fly again. John warned that a serious Starship failure could take out the whole tower, calling it higher risk, higher reward. China has successfully caught a rocket booster with giant nets, while SpaceX’s partially reusable Falcon 9 lands its booster on legs.

Elon Musk said in March 2025 on X that Starship would head to Mars by the end of 2026 carrying Tesla Optimus robots, but test flight failures put the craft behind schedule. Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots have appeared in demonstrations but do not appear ready for official space missions.

Artemis II flew to the moon and back earlier this year, placing Artemis III in sequence after the crewed lunar flyby. Artemis III will last 14 to 17 days and will dock with two prototype lunar landers while remaining in Earth orbit.