While NASA keeps a close eye on Starship, here’s what the agency wants to see next

Few people were happier with the successful outcome of last week’s test flight of SpaceX’s Starship launch system than NASA engineer Catherine Koerner.

In comments after the spaceflight, Koerner praised the “incredible” video of the Starship rocket and its Super Heavy booster returning to Earth, each making a soft landing. “That was promising and a very, very successful technical test,” she added at a meeting of the Space Studies Board.

Koerner, a former flight director, now manages the development of the “reconnaissance systems” that will support the Artemis missions for NASA – a hugely influential position within the space agency. This includes the Space Launch System rocket, NASA’s Orion spacecraft, spacesuits and the Starship vehicle that will land on the moon.

In recent months, NASA officials like Koerner have grappled with the reality that not all of this hardware is likely to be ready for the planned September 2026 launch date for the Artemis III mission. In particular, the agency is concerned about Starship’s readiness as a “human landing system.” Although SpaceX is making rapid progress with a test campaign, much work remains to get the vehicle to the lunar surface and safely back into lunar orbit.

A spare wheel

For these reasons, as Ars previously reported, NASA and SpaceX are planning the possibility of modifying the Artemis III mission. Instead of landing on the moon, a crew would launch in the Orion spacecraft and rendezvous with Starship in low Earth orbit. This would essentially be a repeat of the Apollo 9 mission, paying off risk and providing a meaningful stepping stone between Artemis missions.

Officially, NASA claims that the agency will conduct a crewed moon landing in September 2026, the Artemis III mission. But almost no one in the space community sees that launch date as anything more than ambitious. Some of my best sources have put the most likely dates for such a mission as 2028 to 2032. A modified Artemis III mission, in low Earth orbit, would therefore bridge a gap between Artemis II and an eventual landing.

Koerner declined interview requests from Ars to discuss this, but at the Space Studies Board meeting she acknowledged seeing these reports on modifying Artemis III. She was then asked directly if these were valid. Here is her full answer:

So this is what I will tell you, if you will allow me an analogy. I have a spare wheel in my car, right? I don’t have a spare steering wheel. I don’t have spare windshield wipers. I have a spare wheel. And why? Why do we carry a spare wheel? That at some point someone made an assessment and said for this vehicle to accomplish its mission there is a certain probability that some things will fail and a certain probability that other things will not fail. It’s probably wise to have a spare tire. I don’t necessarily need a spare steering wheel, right?

We at NASA do a lot of those types of assessments. For example, what happens if this is not available? What happens if that’s not available? Do we have backup plans for that? We’re always working on those kinds of backup plans. Do we have backup plans? It is imperative for me to look at what happens when an Orion spacecraft is not ready for a mission. What happens if I don’t have a mission-ready SLS? What happens if I don’t have a Human Landing System available to complete a mission? What happens if I don’t have a Gateway that I planned to do a mission on?

So we’re constantly looking at backup plans. There are many different options for this. We have made no changes to the current plan as I have outlined and talked about here today. But we have a lot of people looking at a lot of different backup plans so that we do due diligence and make sure that if we need the spare tire, we have the spare tire. It’s why, for example, we now have two systems that we’re developing for the Human Landing System, one for SpaceX and the other from Blue Origin. It’s the reason we have two vendors building spacesuit hardware. Both Collins and Axiom, right? So we are always working on those kinds of things.

That’s a long way of saying that if SpaceX’s spaceship isn’t ready by 2026, NASA is actively considering alternative plans. (The most likely of these would be an Orion Starship in low Earth orbit.) NASA has not yet made any final plans and is waiting to see how Artemis II progresses and what happens with the development of Starships and spacesuits.

What SpaceX needs to demonstrate

During her remarks, Koerner was also asked what SpaceX’s next big milestone is and when it should be completed before NASA stays on track for a moon landing in 2026. “Their next big milestone test, from a contract perspective, is the cryogenic test. transmission test,” she said. “That will be early next year.”

This timeline lines up with what NASA’s Human Landing System program manager Lisa Watson-Morgan recently told Ars. It provides a useful benchmark to evaluate Starship’s progress in the eyes of NASA. The “prop transfer demo” is a fairly complex mission that involves launching a “Starship target” from the Starbase facility in South Texas. Then a second vehicle, the “Starship Chaser”, will launch and rendezvous with the target in orbit. The fighter will then transfer a quantity of propellant to the targeted spacecraft.

The test will involve a lot of technology, including docking mechanisms, navigation sensors, quick disconnects and more. If SpaceX completes this test in the first quarter of 2025, NASA will at least theoretically have a path forward to a crewed moon landing in 2026.