BERLIN — As SpaceX prepares for its next Starship test flight, NASA officials say the spacecraft will require “low 10” launches to be used for the Artemis moon landing, which could mean He said the number was much higher than the company’s leadership had previously claimed.
In a presentation at the Nov. 17 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee, Lakisha Hawkins, deputy assistant administrator for NASA’s Lunar and Mars Program Office, said the company plans to launch Starship at current airfields and airfields. He said that it is necessary to do this from both sides. It’s being built in Texas and at the Kennedy Space Center to send a lander to the moon for Artemis 3.
The operational concept for the Starship lunar lander that SpaceX is developing for its Human Landing System (HLS) program calls for multiple launches of the Starship/Superheavy system. A single launch would put a propellant reservoir into orbit, followed by multiple launches of a tanker version of Starship to transfer methane and liquid oxygen propellants to the reservoir. A lander version of Starship will follow, meeting up with the base and filling up its tanks before heading to the moon.
Exactly how many launches will be needed has been a topic of debate since NASA selected Starship for its first HLS award in 2021. Neither NASA nor SpaceX have released hard numbers recently.a Paper on the HLS program presented by NASA at the 2023 International Astronautical CongressFor example, it only mentioned a “series of reusable tanker Starship types” that would be launched to fill the base before the Starship lander launches, without specifying the number.
“The number of launches is in the low 10s,” Hawkins said. She suggested that this was due to concerns about boil-off, or loss of cryogenic liquid propellant, at the base.
“Fuel launches need to occur in quick succession to not only meet the required schedules, but also to manage things like fuel boil-off,” she said.
That schedule calls for the existing Starship launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, and the launch pad SpaceX is building at KSC’s Launch Complex 39A, adjacent to the current pad used for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. Launch from both sides is required. “It should be launched from both sites in a six-day rotation,” she said.
Critics of NASA’s choice of Starship for HLS point to the number of launches as a weakness of this architecture. In rejecting Blue Origin and Dynetics’ appeals against the 2021 Starship HLS award, the General Accounting Office said SpaceX needed 16 launches overall for the Starship lunar lander mission. It pointed out.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk disagreed, saying it was “very unlikely” that 16 launches would be necessary. From a social media post in August 2021. He said it would take “up to eight” tanker launches to refuel the Starship lander, adding that at least four could be needed.
Given that both the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft have flown, the development of the Starship lander has frequently been seen as being on the critical path for the Artemis 3 mission. But earlier in the committee session, Jim Free, associate administrator for exploration systems development, argued that there are many more factors involved in the mission.
“We have a lot of new stuff. [Artemis] 3,” he said, referring to everything from the new spacesuit being developed by Axiom Space to the addition of a docking port for Orion. “Yes, the lander is absolutely important. You can’t go anywhere without it. But you can’t go anywhere without the suit.”
His comments came a day before the scheduled launch of a second integrated starship/super heavy vehicle called OFT-2. This is an important milestone in the development of the Starship vehicle, and ultimately for Artemis. “I hope everyone in all these programs gets behind this,” he said of the launch. “I need OFT-2 to go.”