The term “moonshot” is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as “a plan or aim to do something that seems almost impossible.”
Its original meaning, of course, was literal: aiming to land on the moon, something NASA achieved in the 1960s.
Now, NASA has another moonshot: getting astronauts back to the moon’s surface.
It’s not that that task itself seems impossible — it’s the timeline.
NASA is aiming to put astronauts on the lunar surface in “early 2028” — just 24 months from now.
However, while the space agency has contracted lunar landers to Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, neither has produced a finished product, at least not publicly.
SpaceX has been testing its massive Starship rocket, a version of which is needed to take astronauts to the moon. It has seen measured success, but it is not ready.
And without a lunar lander, there is no lunar mission.
Can NASA deliver given its history of delays?
Last month’s Artemis II mission captured attention around the world. The roughly 10-day mission sent Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, along with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, on a trip around the moon.
NASA’s original 2015 plan was to have the first crewed lunar mission in 2023. But years of delays and cost overruns got in the way.
And that’s the thing: NASA has rarely, if ever, met deadlines for lofty goals. The development of the space shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS) also faced delays.
“I don’t know how they can do it. It doesn’t mean that they can’t do it, I’m just guessing based on past performance,” said space launch historian Paul Fjeld. “I don’t think at any time in the history of NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, that they have done this level of work that quickly. They’ve never proven it.”
In February, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman announced a major shift in its Artemis program. Aside from “pausing” the Lunar Gateway space station that was to be built in orbit around the moon, Artemis III is no longer the mission to put astronauts on the ground. That now falls to Artemis IV, scheduled for 2028. Instead, Artemis III will launch to Earth orbit and practice docking with one of the lunar landers next year.
Except, again, there are no lunar landers ready at the moment.
A version of SpaceX’s Starship is meant to be used for the first lunar landing in more than 50 years, but it still has not reached orbit.
And Blue Origin faced a setback last month when the second stage of its New Glenn rocket failed to reach proper orbit.
“I didn’t think [the goal] was very realistic when it was first said, and it seems even less realistic now,” said Philip Stooke, professor emeritus and adjunct research professor at the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration at Western University in London, Ont.
“It all hinges on the landers being available. And that’s going to take a long time, I think. Much longer than they’re allowing.”
Jesse Rogerson, associate professor at York University’s faculty of science in Toronto, similarly feels skeptical about the timeline.
“I would expect a couple of years of slip on this new schedule. So I don’t think it’s necessarily possible by 2028 to get boots on the ground,” he said. “However, I do semi-agree with some of the reorganization because I think Artemis III happening at low Earth orbit or Earth orbit makes sense.”
What does not make sense to him is the cancellation of Lunar Gateway, which was to serve as a ferrying point for astronauts travelling to and from the moon after the first two crewed lunar-surface missions.
And that hits Canada too, since it was to provide Gateway with Canadarm3.
The new spacesuits are also behind schedule.
But wait … there’s more
To get to the moon, both the Blue Origin and SpaceX landers will need to refuel in space.
For SpaceX, that would mean launching a storage depot, followed by as many as 10 or more tankers to fuel it. Then it sets off to the moon to wait for the astronauts.
Now imagine living on Florida’s space coast, near Kennedy Space Center. You would have a massive rocket — one that shakes homes — launching every few hours to meet the refuelling goal.
“[Imagine a launch] every hour plus double sonic booms coming back. You’re going to hear that in Titusville, Cocoa Beach, all the areas around it, and people will lose their minds,” Fjeld said. “Not only that, how do you clear a path? So you’re gonna have to stop all airline flights?”
SpaceX launched its Starship again on Tuesday in its ninth test flight from Starbase in Texas. The company, which used a reused booster rocket for the first time, lost control of Starship about 30 minutes into the mission.
So why did it become far more complicated than in the Apollo days, when one launch took astronauts to and from the moon?
“I think the answer is that SpaceX was developing its own system, the big booster and then the Starship on top of it, with the intention of going to Mars,” Stooke said. “He had this big Starship that was supposed to be capable of a Mars trip. Then NASA says, ‘Can you build a lunar lander?’ And they say, perhaps cavalierly, ‘Yeah, we’ll modify this big Starship to make it into a lunar lander.'”
But so far, neither company has proved it can do ship-to-ship transfer, and they would likely have to practice it many times before NASA approved it for a crewed mission.
“It’s not just that you have to get Starship into orbit. You have to demonstrate refuelling, that you actually [can] make that work,” Stooke said. “You’ve also got to do a test flight of the lander. There certainly isn’t time between now and early 2028.”
More to consider
On March 10, the U.S. Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a damning report on the Artemis program.
Among other things, it noted that SpaceX’s human landing system (HLS) was problematic in how it would get astronauts to and from the moon’s surface. The current design uses an elevator to ferry astronauts. That is the only way up or down. What if it malfunctions? There are no redundancies.
Both landers are also far taller than the seven-metre ones of the Apollo era. Blue Origin’s currently measures 16 metres, and SpaceX’s a whopping 52 metres. That is a problem not only if the method of egress fails, but also because of the risk of tipping over, something seen with small commercial lunar landers in the recent past.
So let’s run it down again.
The landers need to be tested. They need to prove they can do a ship-to-ship fuel transfer. The spacesuit is facing delays. And the companies will likely need a test-run to the moon — and possibly back — to prove readiness.
And NASA thinks all of that can all be done within 24 months?
Taking all of that into account, it seems unlikely NASA will hit that date. But that does not mean it is out of reach.
The bigger question is whether it will beat China, which is aiming to put humans on the moon by 2032 — another NASA goal.
“Let’s say that it’s going to be neck and neck,” Stooke said.
