Starship HLS
Starship HLS 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.
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) |
| Production | |
| Status | In development |
| Maiden launch | 2025 (planned) |
| 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 |
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. NASA later contracted for an upgraded version of Starship HLS to be used on the Artemis 4 mission.