BERLIN — As SpaceX prepares for its next Starship test flight, a NASA official said that the usage of that vehicle for Artemis lunar landings would require “within the high teens” of launches, a much higher number than what the corporate’s leadership has previously claimed.
In a presentation at a gathering of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee Nov. 17, Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator in NASA’s Moon to Mars Program Office, said the corporate can have to perform Starship launches from each its current pad in Texas and one it’s constructing on the Kennedy Space Center so as send a lander to the moon for Artemis 3.
SpaceX’s concept of operations for the Starship lunar lander it’s developing for the Human Landing System (HLS) program requires multiple launches of the Starship/Super Heavy system. One launch will place a propellant depot into orbit, followed by multiple other launches of tanker versions of Starship, transferring methane and liquid oxygen propellants into the depot. That shall be followed by the lander version of Starship, which can rendezvous with the depot and fill its tanks before going to the moon.
Exactly what number of launches shall be required has been some extent of debate since Starship’s selection by NASA for the primary HLS award in 2021. Neither NASA nor SpaceX have given firm numbers recently. A paper concerning the HLS program presented on the 2023 International Astronautical Congress by NASA, for instance, mentioned only “a series of reusable tanker Starship variants” that will be launched to fill the depot before the Starship lander is launched, without giving a number.
“It’s within the high teens within the variety of launches,” Hawkins said. That’s driven, she suggested, about concerns about boiloff, or lack of cryogenic liquid propellants, on the depot.
“As a way to give you the option to satisfy the schedule that’s required, in addition to managing boiloff and so forth of the fuel, there’s going to should be a rapid succession of launches of fuel,” she said.
That schedule would require launches from each the prevailing Starship pad at Boca Chica, Texas, in addition to the one SpaceX is constructing at KSC’s Launch Complex 39A, adjoining to the present pad used for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. “We should always give you the option to launch from each of those sites,” she said, on a “six-day rotation.”
Critics of NASA’s collection of Starship for HLS have pointed to the variety of launches as a weakness within the architecture. The Government Accountability Office, in its rejection of protests by Blue Origin and Dynetics of the Starship HLS award in 2021, noted that SpaceX required 16 launches overall for a Starship lunar lander mission.
Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, disagreed, calling the necessity for 16 launches “extremely unlikely” in an August 2021 social media post. He said a “max of 8” tanker launches ought to be needed to fuel the Starship lander, adding it might be as few as 4.
Development of the Starship lander has incessantly been seen as on the critical path for the Artemis 3 mission, provided that each the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft have each flown. Nonetheless, earlier within the committee session, Jim Free, associate administrator for exploration systems development, argued that there are a lot of more aspects going into that mission.
“We have now an entire bunch of recent stuff that comes together for [Artemis] 3,” he said, from latest spacesuits being developed by Axiom Space to the addition of a docking port on Orion. “Yes, the lander is totally vital. We are able to’t go anywhere without it. But, we can also’t go anywhere without the suits.”
His comments got here a day before the scheduled launch of the second integrated Starship/Super Heavy vehicle, designated OFT-2, that could be a key milestone in the event of the Starship vehicle and thus for Artemis. “I hope everybody across all of those programs is cheering that on,” he said of the launch. “We’d like OFT-2 to go.”