SpaceX Refines Lunar Starship for Artemis Missions
NASA’s Artemis program continues to advance toward its objective of returning humans to the Moon, supported by a network of commercial and international partners. Following the near-flawless Artemis 1 mission, which tested the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule, the crew for Artemis 2—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—has begun intensive training for a lunar flyby. These milestones pave the way for Artemis 3, which will mark the first crewed lunar landing in more than fifty years.
Central to Artemis 3’s architecture is SpaceX’s Human Landing System (HLS) variant of Starship, tasked with ferrying astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface. NASA awarded SpaceX the first HLS contract in April 2021, citing the vehicle’s cost-effectiveness as a derivative of a commercial rocket. Standing 164 feet (50 meters) tall in its initial form, Starship offered a spacious crew cabin and a claimed payload capacity of 100 tons.
SpaceX’s lunar landing strategy depends on large-scale orbital refueling. Lakiesha Hawkins of NASA’s Moon to Mars program office noted that nearly 20 Starships will be launched as tankers or depots, transferring liquid methane and liquid oxygen to the lunar lander variant. This complex sequence introduces schedule risk, as demonstrated by the second Integrated Flight Test, which reached orbit but left substantial in-orbit testing ahead.
Early HLS renderings resembled a standard Starship stripped of aerodynamic flaps and heat shield tiles, with a small ring of solar panels near the nose and an elevator for crew access. Leaked images published by David Willis on November 2 suggest a taller design—about 180 feet (55 meters)—likely due to enlarged propellant tanks. Elon Musk had hinted at such an increase in December 2021. Greater fuel capacity would improve performance for lunar missions, which demand higher delta-V and require the lander to loiter in lunar orbit for up to 100 days.
The updated design retains a mostly white exterior to reflect solar radiation and reduce propellant boil-off, but the engine section is now painted black, possibly to aid thermal management of the Raptor engines in lunar shadow. The four landing legs, previously enclosed in aerodynamic fairings, now retract flush against the hull, indicating confidence in their structural resilience and the booster’s thrust to offset drag.
One of the most notable changes is the addition of five large deployable solar arrays. Housed beneath the crew cabin during launch, each array can extend to about 60 feet (18 meters) and is arranged in a hexagonal pattern with one position left open for visibility and elevator deployment. In orbit, the arrays would be oriented perpendicular to the propellant tanks, with the vehicle’s nose pointed toward the Sun. On the lunar surface, their vertical alignment would optimize energy capture at the South Pole, where the Sun hovers near the horizon. These arrays likely exceed the surface area of earlier designs, suggesting increased power demands—potentially for scientific instruments, cryogenic propellant cooling, or other systems.
A NASA publication confirmed ongoing development of deployable solar arrays, along with crew displays, elevators, hot gas reaction control systems, thermal protection, landing legs, docking mechanisms, and medical systems. The leaked renderings also show six communications antennae interspersed among the solar panels, enabling links to Earth, Orion, lunar surface teams, and the Gateway station.
Another confirmed feature is the inclusion of 18 small landing thrusters in six pods beneath the crew cabin. While the main descent will be powered by Raptor engines, these elevated thrusters will mitigate plume-surface interactions by reducing debris excavation during touchdown. Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA HLS Program Manager, stated, “We had a cold-start Raptor Vacuum test that was recently completed. (SpaceX is) also working on smaller thrusters.”
Docking arrangements with Orion remain unclear. The nose cone now features a rounded fairing, and one rendering shows a circular silver structure over the hatchway, possibly indicating a side-mounted docking port. This configuration could allow direct ingress into the unpressurized bay housing the airlock, elevator, and scientific payloads.
The crew cabin layout is still being refined. Seats visible in earlier concepts appear to persist, despite Apollo’s choice to remove them for weight savings and improved visibility. Watson-Morgan noted progress on medical kit testing, training systems, and crew displays, and SpaceX has repurposed a retired Starship nose cone into an HLS mockup for design evaluation and astronaut training.
Half a century after Apollo’s last lunar departure, NASA and SpaceX are shaping a lander with stretched fuel tanks, advanced solar arrays, refined thermal management, and specialized landing thrusters—engineering choices aimed at enabling sustained human exploration of the Moon.
