Analysis: Narrowing In – Artemis III, HLS and NASA’s Journey to Today

Artemis III was perhaps the single most anticipated mission in all of human spaceflight. This is not to say the mission as of today is unimportant or even unambitious, but it has been descoped significantly. The key problem lies in the Human Landing System (HLS) Program. The vehicles responsible for carrying humans to and from the lunar surface have failed to manifest now two years after the original target date for Artemis III.

Meanwhile, the Moon Base program, a new initiative spun up by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, has become an umbrella for all activities on the lunar surface, with the aim of establishing a permanent presence on the Moon’s surface. Between Moon Base and the existing Artemis Program, the Human Landing System has become the central pillar of the entire program which links the two together. How did this system come to simultaneously occupy the core of NASA’s ambitions, while slipping significantly on its schedule in the last seven years? As with all things aerospace, the story is immensely complex.

Back To The Moon

In 2017, the Trump Administration was leaning big into NASA. White House Space Policy Directive 1 was signed, putting NASA through its latest shift in priorities. The Obama Administration plans regarding asteroids were out: NASA was now to organize a Moon program, alongside private-sector partners. Key hardware from the Asteroid Redirect Mission was reworked to create the Deep Space Gateway, a space station in the vicinity of the Moon. The CLPS program was also officiated, to solicit small private landers for delivering cargo to the Moon. The Orion spacecraft and SLS launch vehicle programs, already in flow, continued development.

Space Policy Directive 1 explicitly stated the need for a means of landing humans on the Moon’s surface by 2028. In March of 2019, Vice President Mike Pence moved the landing date up to 2024, coinciding with the end of Trump’s second term should he win reelection. But landing in only five years was an ambitious target for the young Artemis Program, which did not even have a lander in flow yet. 

The Human Landing System

In April of 2019 NASA put out a request for proposals regarding a Human Landing System (HLS), with a November deadline for submissions. The initial HLS was a lander able to meet the requirements of Artemis III: landing two astronauts. The winning design must also be able to evolve into a “sustainable” variant, a lander capable of landing Orion’s full crew of four astronauts, and being reused for multiple landings. The sustainable lander would also be required to operate to and from the Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit of the Lunar Gateway, which would be joining the program one flight after the first landing on Artemis IV.

NASA made moves to accelerate a rapid acquisition and development process for HLS in response to the 2024 target. Official documentation describes that NASA “removed requirements that industry perceived as potential barriers to meeting the schedule” including a “less formal insight mode” requiring less technical briefings. NASA also chose a firm-fixed price contract model for HLS, which is often poorly suited for projects lacking very firm guidelines and with low technical readiness.

The Human Landing System program was awarded competitively, the initial series of 11 proposals narrowed down to three finalist designs by April 2020: Dynetics’ ALPACA lander, the Blue Origin-led National Team’s Integrated Landing Vehicle (ILV), and SpaceX which pitched a modified Starship. NASA expected to award full development contracts for two landers in early 2021, should funding allow.

A Messy Selection

Trump lost reelection, leaving the HLS selection process to occur through an administrative transition. At the same time, of the $3.3 billion dollars requested for funding HLS, Congress only allotted $850 million, not sufficient to select two landers. The HLS selection deadline was delayed from February 2021 to the 30th of April. Jim Bridenstine indicated the agency required more time to assess the HLS award structure, and the feasibility of the 2024 deadline, shortly before stepping down on January 20th.

But by the time Bill Nelson was sworn in as the new Administrator on May 3rd, NASA had already decided on a lander. On April 16th the agency announced Starship HLS as the sole lander for Artemis III. The decision came from the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, operating under Associate Administrator Kathy Lueders. Despite its outward ambition, Starship HLS was given an “outstanding” management rating, higher than both competitors, and tied for highest technical rating with ILV. 

Blue Origin and Dynetics submitted protests to the Government Accountability Office, later resulting in Blue Origin filing a complaint to the United States Court of Federal Claims in August, alleging that NASA gave SpaceX an unfair advantage in the selection process.

BLUE ORIGIN FEDERATION, LLC v. USA  

The situation, described in court filings and the HLS Source Selection Statement, was as follows: a Source Evaluation Panel of NASA subject matter experts was to evaluate the merits of each HLS proposal. The evaluations would then be passed to a Source Selection Authority (SSA) tasked with “making selections and final contract award decisions.” For this contract, the SSA was Kathy Lueders. After receiving evaluations, Lueders’ opinion was that SpaceX’s proposal provided the most value to NASA. 

Starship, while lavish for an initial landing capability, did promise capabilities in line with Artemis’ objectives: Rapid launch cadence, high mass payload delivery to the Moon’s surface, in-space propellant transfer technologies, reusability, and evolvability to Mars. At the time, selecting Starship could be seen as deciding to play the long game, in service of Artemis’s goals as they existed at the time.

Further discussions between Lueders and a contracting officer maintained SpaceX as the most viable option, despite clerical issues with SpaceX’s proposal. There was, however, an available solution. NASA’s specific contract language allowed for “initial non-binding selections” which enabled a contracting officer to begin post-selection negotiations early. An initial selection of SpaceX was made, and negotiations for revising SpaceX’s proposal and its price began. The issues related to Flight Readiness Reviews (FRRs): SpaceX initially laid out only one FRR for the final launch of its HLS campaign, despite the 16 launch total. Through negotiations SpaceX submitted a revised proposal addressing the need for additional FRRs, but did not budge on pricing. Ultimately, however, the revisited proposal was accepted and SpaceX became the HLS awardee. While similar negotiations with Blue Origin were considered, the asking price for ILV was dismissed as too high to be negotiated down. 

To be clear, the United States Court of Federal Claims did not find NASA in violation of procurement law. Blue Origin alleged that had it been aware of NASA’s willingness to negotiate on requirements, it would’ve stood a better chance at competing, but differences in Blue Origin’s proposal and its significantly higher asking price cast doubt on that assertion. The case was dismissed in November of 2021.

The Government Accountability Office concluded that the lawsuit added a four month delay to NASA and SpaceX beginning formal work on the HLS system. Bill Nelson would serve through Biden’s entire presidency, and defended NASA’s decision to select Starship HLS in multiple Senate hearings. Kathy Lueders would leave NASA in April 2023, and weeks later took a position as a General Manager on SpaceX’s Starship Program, where she worked until May of 2025.

A 15-Story Initial Lander

The logistical argument is clear: NASA believed it could only reasonably fund SpaceX’s lander. SpaceX was also establishing itself as a true space powerhouse, with Falcon 9 pioneering the modern incarnation of reusable orbital launch. SpaceX had also recently achieved their first crewed spaceflight capability, and to date Crew Dragon is the only Commercial Crew Vehicle to enter an operational status. There was wide public opinion that SpaceX pushed the envelope and succeeded.

Falcon 9 with Crew Dragon Endeavour stacked for the Crew-2 Mission, the company’s second full crew rotation in service of the International Space Station. (Photo Credit: SpaceX, accessed via Flickr)

SpaceX proposed the largest crew-rated spacecraft ever assembled and flown. Starship HLS is around 50 meters tall and nine meters wide, larger than even the Space Shuttle. All three teams had provided full scale mock-ups of their vehicles, but SpaceX was already building and flying full scale prototypes of Starship by 2021, leading to the SpaceX proposal’s high technical rating.

The flights occurring in 2021 were proving a landing profile designed for the Earth and Mars, during which Starship utilises its long body length and control surfaces to guide itself through an aerodynamically-assisted landing. The Moon has no atmosphere, and so Starship HLS does not utilise this landing process; its length becomes simply heavy, empty tankage which has to be landed safely. Starship HLS also relies on a ring of a dozen raised engines, of a unique design, for final landing burn. Landing on Starship’s main engines risks blowing a hole in the ground where it tries to land.

Being the upper stage of its own launch vehicle, Starship HLS climbs into orbit of Earth under its own power. Most of its fuel is spent on this climb, necessitating a refueling campaign. Representatives from both SpaceX and NASA have often danced around the precise number, but the court filings claim 16 launches total, including HLS. First a specialized depot-Starship is launched into Earth orbit, 14 tankers follow to fuel the depot, and finally Starship HLS docks to the depot to refuel itself to reach the Moon, pick up its crew from Orion, and perform landing and ascent.

All of this in mind, SpaceX now had a multi-year contract with a maximum value of at $4.5 billion dollars, and 40 months to deliver Starship HLS to NRHO around the Moon for Artemis III, which included an uncrewed demo landing, and a ship-to-ship propellant transfer demonstration. To date SpaceX has conducted 13 launches of the fully integrated Starship-Super Heavy launch vehicle, all of which represented an initial full-stack testing campaign, with the 14th Starship flight test expected as the system’s first full-orbit demonstration. SpaceX has completed some mockup testing of Starship HLS’ landing legs, elevator, and seems to have completed developing the vehicle’s unique landing engines, but no HLS-specific hardware has flown, aside from a small internal fuel transfer on Starship’s third flight. According to USASpending.gov, SpaceX has already received over $3 billion dollars of the contract’s funding. 

Perhaps the primary apparent issue with Starship HLS is that the core of its development regards a launch vehicle first, and a lander second. The launch vehicle has since proven challenging on its own, but not unexpectedly so. Falcon 9 was announced in 2005, and it delivered its first crewed launch in 2020, a period of 15 years. SLS’ design was selected in 2011, and carried its first crew to the Moon this year; also 15 years. Starship (at the time ITS) was announced in 2017, and the first orbital flight will likely occur this September; it’s already been eight years. Starship achieved its initial launches and even reuse very quickly, but meeting its payload requirements has necessitated further redesigns. Starship’s supposedly rapid development strategy already failed to meet 2024, and the date has pushed back to its original 2028 baseline. 

 Slow and Steady, or Win the Race?

Rhetoric leading up to and following Starship HLS’ selection was very focused around the concept of Artemis as a Moon-to-Mars program. Starship HLS was ambitious, yes, but large-scale orbital refueling would be necessary for missions to Mars, which was Artemis’ ultimate goal. Landing on the Moon was a stepping stone, not the end goal, and Starship HLS, being derived from a system envisioned for Mars, served that narrative. In May of 2023 NASA received funding for an additional lander, selecting Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2, an evolution of the smaller ILV proposal, for use on Artemis V in 2030. Aspirationally, Artemis would be able to rely on two vendors to maintain cadence into the next decade.

Two months later in July 2023 China announced its own accelerated goal for its lunar program, moving their target from a loose “mid-2030s” to landing Chinese astronauts “by 2030.” China poses an increasing challenge to U.S. leadership in spaceflight with its ability to organize industry around government objectives. When China announced their 2030 target, they had just completed assembling their modular space station, achieving a target date which was first declared in 2011. With the country’s growing reputation in aerospace, there was reason to believe 2030 was announced from a place of confidence, not just political prestige.

Artemis III had begun to slip, with neither Starship or SLS to be ready by the 2024 target. Bill Nelson was quick to begin pushing Moon race rhetoric, citing concerns that both Artemis and the Chinese Program were targeting the lunar south pole, seeking possible sources of water. No two nations have ever operated in the same region of another planetary body at the same time; the concern is that because the operational playbook remains unwritten, whoever gets there first will determine the rules. Bill Nelson expressed in press conferences and interviews his fears that China could attempt to block access to regions of the Moon where they land first, and refuse to share scientific findings with the international community. 

Artemis’ target date was pushing back, but the time spent was envisioned as making way for a capability that would far-exceed Apollo, with more landings, longer stays, and lower cost to the government. Apollo was seen by many as a cautionary tale, a hasty program with near-sighted goals that was cancelled when its political value was exhausted. Artemis’ various components, including HLS, were complex but optimally capable. The various pieces came together to create a strong, flexible backbone for the program, one that could demonstrate the technology and growing industry toolset required to execute missions to Mars. “We don’t fly until it’s ready. That’s it,” Bill Nelson stated simply in a 2023 interview with NPR, emphasizing the need to ensure astronauts are not endangered by a rush to beat China. But the poison of a Moon Race narrative was swallowed by Congress, and as Artemis slid ever nearer to China’s 2030 claim, the pressure continued to mount. Moon race rhetoric has now consumed nearly all discussion of the Artemis Program, being the primary point of discussion for both of current NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman’s Senate hearings prior to his approval.

Artemis In Flames

Roughly six months ago, ahead of the launch of Artemis II, Jared Isaacman announced sweeping changes to the entire Artemis Program. The later press event on March 24th, titled “Ignition: NASA’s Plan For The Moon,” elaborated on these changes. A fuse built over several years of slipping timelines, increasing pressure, and unwillingness to reassess finally lit and has exploded into an ongoing overhaul of the Artemis Program and NASA itself. 

Isaacman argued that jumping straight from the relatively simple Artemis II, a government-only single-launch endeavour, straight into a massive campaign with dozens of launches coordinated between NASA and SpaceX was too ambitious of a leap, alongside the subsequent substantial upgrade to SLS Block 1B on Artemis IV. Isaacman also argued that an internal 2029 landing estimate was too close to China’s date, not providing sufficient confidence for beating China. 

In short, Artemis III is now an Earth orbit mission where Orion and its crew will perform checkouts on a Blue Moon Mark 2 spacecraft, and dock to a scarcely modified Starship, to build further technical readiness across all involved teams. On its face, especially compared to Apollo’s incremental test missions such as Apollo 9, this change of plans is entirely logical, and beneficial. 

The question concerns timelines. Artemis III is now targeting 2027; if the first landing was estimated internally in 2029, is 2027 a feasible delivery date for Blue Origin’s first full-scale HLS prototype, with crew systems? Does one additional orbital Starship, even with a docking demo and potentially an integrated burn, give Starship HLS momentum to be ready a year earlier? The logic becomes questionable, but the necessary steps cannot possibly be spread further apart. Everything to ensure an American lander reaches the finish line before China simply must occur, the deadline is not negotiable anymore.

Artemis has met its ultimate obstacle: a deadline that, so far, does not move. Beating China is the primary objective, and all plans are being accelerated for this goal. The Lunar Gateway added additional docking and performance requirements to HLS, so the station was scrapped. Starship’s refueling campaign is intensive, so now it will meet with Orion in Earth orbit and carry both vehicles to the Moon under its own power, reducing the amount of fuel required. Blue Origin’s accelerated plan, evolving from an initial idea similar to SpaceX’s, now completely ditches orbital refueling, according to Eric Berger of Ars Technica. The plan now relies on stacking stripped down versions of Blue Moon Mark 1 landers in orbit to boost the primary lander to the Moon. 

Without refueling, how do you reuse Blue Moon in space? It’s unclear if Orion can reach low orbit of the Moon; how does the crew get to Starship for subsequent landings? The first landing on the Moon since 1972 will use a fresh lander—reuse does not matter anymore. SLS was originally envisioned to use a larger upper stage to deliver modules for Gateway and eventually Mars spacecraft, but because this stage has historically experienced delays it has been replaced and supplanted with a new one. Mars might still be NASA’s long term goal, but it can no longer logistically occupy the same funding lines as Artemis. Mars demonstrations are pushed into other programs, such as the new SR1 nuclear spacecraft, and technology demonstrations are pushed down the road, or discarded like the long-duration deep space transit analog offered by Gateway. The landers and timelines NASA selected with intent to service a prolonged and sophisticated exploration program have evolved into obstacles, not capabilities.

If China begins to slip on their 2030 target date, one wonders when that delay would be announced.  China maintaining their 2030 target has caused the United States’ lunar program to begin reorganizing itself entirely around their schedule. As the old saying goes, why interrupt an enemy who is about to make a mistake?

Conclusions

None of this is meant to undermine the immense task of balancing both the safety of NASA astronauts and mission deadlines, and to its credit the new Artemis roadmap has been regarded favorably by safety authorities at NASA. Artemis’ story is a long ongoing road, and this article is by no means comprehensive. For example, New Glenn destroyed its only launch pad this summer, and the impacts remain unclear. What is clear is the overarching trend: the Human Landing System was brought into Artemis to service a program where timelines were ultimately negotiable, and now they no longer are.

The United States has not opened negotiations with China regarding terms for parallel operation on the Moon, nor vice versa. Landing first will be the opening remark for those eventual discussions—and for that reason the Human Landing System has become the core of the program. Orion can reach the Moon, but as planned it will only do so if a lander awaits it. As Isaacman says, “I think we, again, all universally agree it is better to have an astronaut on the surface than it is looking down from above it.”