Starship HLS

Mission specifications

Operator

SpaceX

Prime contractor

SpaceX

Launch

Late 2027 (NET — Artemis III crewed LEO docking demo); first crewed landing Artemis IV (~2028)

Landing site

Lunar south pole (NASA-curated candidate region near 84-90°S) — first surface use Artemis IV

Customer

NASA-HLS

Payload

~100 tonnes to lunar surface (sustained variant target)as of 2024-04-16^[2]Largest crewed lunar lander ever contracted. Stands ~50 m tall — 15-story building scale. Elevator transfers crew between cabin and surface.

Contract value

$2.89B + $1.15B Option B = $4.04B totalas of 2022-11-15^[3]Original Option A (Artemis III, April 2021) $2.89B; Option B (Artemis IV sustained, November 2022) added $1.15B. Total HLS ceiling $4.5B.

Key findings

• 1.Aims to serve as NASA's crewed Human Landing System, a ~50 m (roughly 15-story) Starship variant designed to carry on the order of 100 tonnes to the lunar surface and transfer 2-4 astronauts via an internal elevator - the largest crewed lunar lander ever contracted.
• 2.Requires an in-orbit refueling architecture: a Super Heavy launch followed by multiple Starship tanker flights (NASA estimates have ranged into the high teens, with later figures near ten) to fuel a depot before the lander transits to a near-rectilinear halo orbit.
• 3.Plans to rendezvous and dock with Orion (delivered by SLS) in lunar orbit, with the lander carrying the crew down to a NASA-curated south-pole candidate region and back up to orbit.
• 4.In 2026 NASA redefined Artemis III as a crewed HLS docking demonstration in low Earth orbit (late 2027 NET) rather than a landing, naming the crew - Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas - on June 9, 2026, and moving the first crewed lunar landing to Artemis IV (~2028).
• 5.Faces open programmatic risk: NASA OIG report IG-26-004 (March 2026) flagged crew-rescue capability and an aggressive schedule, and in October 2025 NASA (acting administrator Sean Duffy) reopened the Artemis III lander contract to competition, citing Starship's development pace.

Mission outcome

Starship HLS, selected in April 2021 as NASA's sole Artemis III lander provider under a contract worth about $4.04B, remains in development and has not yet flown a crewed mission. Its complex architecture - Super Heavy plus multiple tanker refueling flights, transit to lunar orbit, and rendezvous with Orion - drove NASA in 2026 to recast Artemis III as a late-2027 crewed docking demonstration in low Earth orbit and push the first crewed landing to Artemis IV around 2028. Success would give the United States its first crewed lunar surface capability since Apollo and, uniquely, the ability to deliver very large payloads to the Moon; near-term attention is on demonstrating orbital refueling, crew safety, and schedule against the competitive pressure that reopened the contract.