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SpaceX has come up with a more constructive response to NASA concerns about its Human Landing System (HLS) project than rage-posts by Elon Musk insulting NASA acting administrator Sean Duffy as “Sean Dummy.”
Instead of insisting that everything is well with HLS, which is based on the upper stage of SpaceX’s giant, still-under-development Starship rocket, SpaceX says it is now working on a “simplified” version of that lander.
The news came in an unusually detailed update from SpaceX. Part of its almost 2,000-word post recaps progress on Starship, which completed its 11th test flight in October, and on such HLS components as its life-support system, airlock, communications gear, and the elevator that will take astronauts and gear from the top of the tall HLS vehicle down to the lunar surface.
This post reports a sometime-in-2026 test of the orbital refueling necessary for the HLS concept to work. Starship’s upper stage reaches orbit with its tanks mostly empty, requiring multiple refills from other Starships.
NASA knew of this complexity when it awarded SpaceX a $2.89 billion contract in 2021 (since revised to $4 billion, with $2.7 billion paid so far) to develop HLS to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface and then back. Astronauts will journey from Earth in NASA’s own Orion capsule, launched atop the space agency’s Space Launch System rocket, then return to Earth in that smaller spacecraft.
But SpaceX’s lagging pace–both relative to the company’s earlier predictions and to China’s progress towards a crewed lunar landing by 2030–led Duffy to announce on Oct. 20 that NASA was re-opening the contract to build a lander for Artemis III. That mission would be the first landing on the Moon by American astronauts since December 1972; revising earlier agency protections, Duffy said it’s now a 2028 proposition.
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Do you think “2028” when you see this or “2030”? (Credit: SpaceX )
Duffy, whose day job is President Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, name-checked Blue Origin as a possible alternative in media appearances. Musk, who has often mocked the Jeff Bezos-owned firm, spent much of the next day trash-talking Duffy in posts on X.
SpaceX’s post still calls Starship “the fastest path to returning humans to the surface of the Moon and a core enabler of the Artemis program’s goal to establish a permanent, sustainable presence on the lunar surface,” but it confirms that the company has read the instructions from NASA.
“Since the contract was awarded, we have been consistently responsive to NASA as requirements for Artemis III have changed and have shared ideas on how to simplify the mission to align with national priorities,” it says. “In response to the latest calls, we’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety.”
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The post provides no further details. Blue Origin hasn’t offered any about its own response to Duffy’s call, which reportedly would involve adapting its cargo-only Blue Moon Mark 1 lander to carry people.
Blue already has a $3.4 billion NASA contract, awarded in 2023, to develop its larger Blue Moon Mark 2 lander for Artemis V and later landings. Both versions of Blue Moon would launch on Blue’s New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, which had a successful orbital debut in January and is now nearing a second launch. Mark 2, however, would require its own refueling in space; Mark 1 would not.
NASA now has revised proposals from both of these companies, spokeswoman Bethany Stevens confirmed in an emailed statement on Friday.
“NASA has received and will be evaluating plans from both SpaceX and Blue Origin for acceleration of HLS production. Following the shutdown, the agency will issue an RFI [Request For Information] to the broader aerospace industry for their proposals,” she says. “A committee of NASA subject matter experts will be assembled to evaluate each proposal and determine the best path forward to win the second space race given the urgency of adversarial threats to peace and transparency on the Moon.”
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