Starship HLS

Starship HLS

NASA rendering of Starship HLS
Manufacturer	SpaceX
Country of origin	United States
Operator	SpaceX
Applications	Lunar lander
Specifications
Spacecraft type	Crewed, reusable
Crew capacity	2 (Artemis 3) 4 (Artemis 4)
Regime	Cislunar space
Dimensions
Height	50 m (160 ft)
Diameter	9 m (30 ft)
Capacity
Payload to lunar surface
Mass	100 t (220,000 lb)[1]
Production
Status	In development
Maiden launch	2025 (planned)[2]
Related spacecraft
Derived from	SpaceX Starship (spacecraft)
Flown with	SpaceX Super Heavy
Starship HLS
Powered by	3 Raptor engines 3 Raptor vacuum engines RCS thruster bank
Maximum thrust	1,500 tf (14,700 kN; 3,310,000 lbf) (Raptor engines)
Propellant	Liquid oxygen / Methane

Starship HLS (Human Landing System)^[a] is a lunar lander variant of the Starship spacecraft that is slated to transfer astronauts from a lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back. It is being designed and built by SpaceX under the Human Landing System contract to NASA as a critical element of NASA's Artemis program to land a crew on the Moon.

The mission plan calls for a Starship launch vehicle to launch a Starship HLS into Earth orbit, where it will be refueled by multiple Starship tanker spacecraft before boosting itself into a lunar near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO). There, it will rendezvous with a crewed Orion spacecraft that will be launched from Earth by a NASA Space Launch System (SLS) launcher. A crew of two astronauts will transfer from Orion to HLS, which will then descend to the lunar surface for a stay of approximately 7 days, including at least five EVAs. It will then return the crew to Orion in NRHO.

In the third phase of its HLS procurement process NASA awarded SpaceX a contract in April 2021 to develop, produce, and demonstrate Starship HLS. An uncrewed test flight is planned for 2025 to demonstrate a successful landing on the Moon. Following that test, a crewed flight is expected to occur as part of the Artemis 3 mission, no earlier than September 2026.^[2] NASA later contracted for an upgraded version of Starship HLS to be used on the Artemis 4 mission.^[3]

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