NASA Says Up to 20 SpaceX Starship Refueling Launches Per Moon Mission

A NASA official said Artemis will need 20 SpaceX Lunar Starship launches per moon landing. On Nov. 17, Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator in NASA’s Moon to Mars Program Office, said SpaceX will have to perform Starship launches from both its current pad in Texas and one it is constructing at the Kennedy Space Center in order send a lander to the moon for Artemis 3. SpaceX’s Human Landing System (HLS) program needs multiple launches for refueling for each moon mission. 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 will be followed by the lander version of Starship, which will rendezvous with the depot and fill its tanks before going to the moon.

Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, disagreed, calling the need for 16 launches extremely unlikely in an August 2021 social media post. He said a max of 8 tanker launches should be needed to fuel the Starship lander, adding it could be as few as four.

NASA wants more fuel depot supply launches to manage boiloff. Fewer launches would be better but would require more fuel reqching orbit with each launch. The more quickly the launches are made then there would be less boiloff.

“It’s in the high teens in the number of launches,” Hawkins said. That’s driven, she suggested, about concerns about boiloff, or loss of cryogenic liquid propellants, at the depot. “In order to be able to meet the schedule that is required, as well as managing boiloff and so forth of the fuel, there’s going to need to be a rapid succession of launches of fuel,” she said.

Artemis III will mark humanity’s return to the Moon in more than 50 years, with NASA making history by sending the first humans to the lunar South Pole to
explore.

There is a seven page NASA 2023 analysis of the Artemis moon missions.

SpaceX’s Starship HLS will be prepositioned in Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) to receive crew. SpaceX will start by launching a storage depot variant of Starship to Earth orbit, followed by a series of reusable tanker Starship variants that will carry propellant to the storage depot. The Starship HLS will
launch and be fueled by the depot before executing a translunar injection (TLI) engine burn, traveling approximately six days to NRHO where it will perform a Lunar Orbit Checkout Review (LOCR) and await the Artemis III crew.

The crew of four will launch to NRHO onboard the Orion spacecraft atop the SLS rocket. Orion will dock with the Starship HLS and two astronauts, and their supplies will board Starship, leaving the other two to remain in Orion. Orion will undock and back away from Starship and remain in NRHO. Starship will then descend to the lunar surface for an approximate 6.5 day stay where crew will do scientific work inside Starship and conduct a series of moonwalks to take pictures and video, survey geology, retrieve samples, and collect other data.

Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.

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