Artemis Mission: Moon Landing Requires Dozens of Starship Flights
A safety advisory panel has offered a significant new figure for the number of SpaceX missions needed to fuel a lunar lander.
By Jacob Leary ·
NASA has long guarded the specific number of SpaceX flights required to fuel a lunar lander as a closely held operational detail. On Thursday, that figure was addressed during the quarterly meeting of the agency's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.
Panel member Charlie Precourt, a former NASA astronaut, spoke about risks associated with the Artemis Program. During his remarks, he stated that a lunar landing using the planned architecture would require 22 Starship launches. This number would cover a depot Starship and the subsequent tanker flights needed to fill it with liquid oxygen and methane propellant for a journey to the Moon.
The stated requirement for 22 launches would represent a significant increase from previous estimates for the mission architecture. In 2023, the then-director of NASA's Human Landing System program, Lisa Watson-Morgan, declined to provide an exact number but stated she was reluctant to say what it was.
Later, she indicated the figure was in the high single digits to the low double digits, a range that would suggest around a dozen launches. Other officials have offered estimates in the high teens. The plan has always been for SpaceX to improve Starship's lift capacity to bring down the number of tanker flights.
However, concerns have emerged among some NASA officials that this improvement may not be happening soon enough to allow Starship a meaningful role in returning humans to the Moon for NASA as part of Artemis this decade.
The number of launches required to fuel a lunar lander in low-Earth orbit has been a moving target for years. The general response from NASA has typically been that the agency does not know for sure and will not say. This figure is critical because a Starship-based lunar lander must be fully fueled in orbit before it can travel to the Moon, land, and return to lunar orbit.
The role of Starship in the Artemis Program remains a subject of ongoing planning and discussion. The number of flights required for such a mission is a key factor in that planning.
The potential for a significant increase in mission complexity is a notable development for the Artemis Program. The number of launches needed for a mission is a factor in overall mission planning.
The agency has not commented further on the matter at this time.
Source: Ars Technica
