NASA Reworks Moon Lander Plans for 2028 Crewed Landing

How will SpaceX's Starship lander work?

SpaceX still plans to aggregate propellant in orbit — transferring super-cold, or cryogenic, liquid fuel between Starships in space. Multiple tanker Starships will launch to low Earth orbit ahead of the Starship Human Landing System (HLS) launch from Florida. Working like a gas station in orbit, the tankers will fill a depot Starship, which will then fuel the lander.

Under the revised operations:

• Starship HLS will wait for Orion and its crew in Earth orbit, where the two spacecraft will rendezvous and dock.
• The lander will perform a trans-lunar injection burn — the rocket firing that sends the stack toward the Moon — carrying Orion with it. NASA is modifying Orion so Starship can push it to the Moon.
• Two crew members will ride Starship to the surface for several days before returning to Orion for the trip home.

The low-lunar-orbit approach significantly cuts the amount of propellant Starship must aggregate in space and shortens the time astronauts leaving the surface need to link back up with Orion. It also gives NASA flexibility in when the crew launches on SLS. SpaceX will demonstrate the propellant aggregation approach during its uncrewed demo flight.

How will Blue Origin's lander get there?

For its accelerated 2028 mission, Blue Origin will skip propellant transfer entirely and instead use three transfer stages to send its Blue Moon Mark 2 Alpha lander to the Moon. The stages, built from existing Mark 1 and Mark 2 hardware, work like a multistage rocket: they launch to low Earth orbit, the Mark 2 lander follows, the stack docks and departs for an elliptical polar orbit around the Moon, and each stage separates as its propellant runs out.

Compared with the previously planned near-rectilinear halo orbit, NASA says the elliptical polar orbit offers faster returns from the lunar surface to Orion, reduces the lander's propellant requirements, and maximizes the performance SLS can deliver. The orbit also gives SLS and Orion multiple launch opportunities to reach the lander. After Orion docks with the lander, two crew members transfer over and descend to the Moon's South Pole.

Blue Origin will fold in lessons from earlier robotic Mark 1 missions supporting NASA's Moon Base Program and will demonstrate the full mission profile in an uncrewed lander and transfer stage demonstration.

Who lands first?

NASA has not decided. Based on lander readiness, the agency will choose which company delivers astronauts to the surface — and back to lunar orbit — in 2028. A second crewed landing opportunity will follow. Under the original contracts, SpaceX's Starship was assigned to Artemis III and IV, while Blue Origin's Mark 2 was slated for Artemis V. Under the realignment, neither provider has a specific landing mission.

NASA is targeting two lunar surface Moonwalks, each roughly two hours long, during the initial missions. Astronauts will collect lunar samples and test the spacesuit provided by Axiom Space.

New contracts, new milestones

Earlier this year NASA updated its contracts with both companies for human landing systems and large cargo deliveries to the Moon. The updates align landing system requirements with the acceleration efforts announced earlier this year to streamline the Artemis architecture, expedite the lunar return, and support a higher mission cadence.

"NASA and our lunar lander providers Blue Origin and SpaceX have been working hand in hand to ensure we can return American astronauts to the Moon by 2028," said Jeremy Parsons, NASA's Artemis program manager. "While work to realign with our partners in support of architecture updates announced at Ignition Day in March has been underway since then, updating the contracts ensures NASA and its partners are on the same page with requirements and other milestones to ensure continued insight into lander development to support mission success and the safety of our Moon crews."

Both providers have added development milestones that give NASA deeper insight and reduce risk. SpaceX is adding two demonstrations of its crew cabin, called Cabin 1, for the Starship lander. Blue Origin is adding human-in-the-loop testing and hardware readiness milestones to streamline training development and ground and flight operations.

Beyond 2028, NASA plans to send Artemis astronauts on increasingly difficult missions near the lunar South Pole, explore more of the Moon than before, and use an enduring lunar presence as the foundation for the first crewed mission to Mars.

The takeaway: the 2028 date is fixed, the plans are not — and both lander teams are now racing the same clock.