{"id":34273,"date":"2025-09-21T09:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T09:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/34273\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T09:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T09:17:08","slug":"nasa-safety-panel-warns-starship-lunar-lander-could-be-delayed-by-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/34273\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA safety panel warns Starship lunar lander could be delayed by years"},"content":{"rendered":"

PARIS \u2014 NASA safety advisers say they doubt the lunar lander version of SpaceX\u2019s Starship will be ready to support the Artemis 3 mission as planned in 2027.<\/p>\n

At a Sept. 19 public meeting, members of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said they believed the Human Landing System, or HLS, version of Starship could be \u201cyears late.\u201d<\/p>\n

That conclusion, panelist Paul Hill said, followed a visit last month to SpaceX\u2019s Starbase facility and meetings with company executives. Hill attended with fellow panelists and former astronauts Charlie Precourt and Kent Rominger.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe HLS schedule is significantly challenged and, in our estimation, could be years late for a 2027 Artemis 3 moon landing,\u201d Hill said.<\/p>\n

A major issue, he said, is demonstrating cryogenic propellant transfer, needed to refuel Starship in low Earth orbit before heading to the moon. That work has been slowed by delays in version 3 of Starship \u2014 the first capable of such transfers \u2014 and by ongoing improvements to the version 3 Raptor engine.<\/p>\n

Hill did not detail the problems or their impact. But SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, speaking Sept. 16 at World Space Business Week<\/a>, said propellant transfer worried her more than docking Starships in orbit. \u201cHopefully it\u2019s not as hard as some of my engineers think it could be,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Despite concerns about schedule delays, panel members praised SpaceX\u2019s accomplishments. Hill cited Falcon 9\u2019s rapid launch tempo, driven largely by Starlink, as creating \u201cunprecedented experience in spacecraft and booster manufacturing, launch preparation and flight operations.\u201d The panel has previously warned of safety risks for programs with low flight rates, such as the Space Launch System and Orion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no competitor, whether government or industry, that has this full combination of factors that yield this high a manufacturing and flight tempo, with their direct effects on reliability increases and cost reduction,\u201d Hill said. \u201cHowever, this sets up competing priorities for Starship and HLS development, which could impact the Artemis schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later in the meeting, panel member Bill Bray raised broader concerns about the Artemis program. Preparations for Artemis 2, set to launch in early 2026, are on track, he said.<\/p>\n

However, \u201cthe panel also sees the path for Artemis 3 and beyond as uncertain and a little murky,\u201d he said, \u201cwhich is not good for the program\u2019s safety and risk posture going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

He cited both HLS and Axiom Space\u2019s development of new lunar spacesuits as concerns, with \u201caggressive\u201d schedules. \u201cAny delay in the delivery of these programs places the planned lunar landing in jeopardy of postponement and\/or significant delay,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese programs remain essential components on the critical path for the success of Artemis 3 and subsequent missions, and need to be critically assessed in the context of the overall mission schedule to understand what\u2019s achievable and when,\u201d Bray said.<\/p>\n

He added that the panel will continue reviewing the Starship HLS program, including a \u201cthorough factfinding\u201d of the design and its use of cryogenic propellant transfer, at future meetings.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS \u2014 NASA safety advisers say they doubt the lunar lander version of SpaceX\u2019s Starship will be ready…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[2305,6817,26905,26906,61,60,91,82,1935,247,2308],"class_list":{"0":"post-34273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-artemis","9":"tag-asap","10":"tag-hls","11":"tag-human-landing-system","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-nasa","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-sn","17":"tag-space","18":"tag-starship"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}