Manufacturer | SpaceX |
---|---|
Country of origin | United States |
Operator | SpaceX |
Applications | Lunar lander |
Specifications | |
Spacecraft type | Crewed, reusable |
Crew capacity |
|
Regime | Cislunar space |
Dimensions | |
Height | 50 m (160 ft) |
Diameter | 9 m (30 ft) |
Capacity | |
Payload to lunar surface | |
Mass | 100,000 kg (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 |
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Propellant | CH4 / LOX |
Starship HLS (Human Landing System) 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 III mission, no earlier than September 2026.[2] NASA later contracted for an upgraded version of Starship HLS to be used on the Artemis IV mission.[3]
Starship itself has been in privately funded development by SpaceX since the mid-2010s, but development of the HLS variant is being funded under NASA's Human Landing System contracts.[4]
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