Prior to recent developments, Orion would then dock with Gateway. Currently, the nominal plan is to launch astronauts into an exotic high lunar orbit with NASA’s own SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft – an inconvenient orbit only needed to make up for said spacecraft’s shortcomings. NASA’s decision to solely select Starship as its future Moon lander was so surprising in large part because of how starkly the vehicle’s potential capabilities contrast with the rest of the Artemis Program.Īs many have already noted, the very existence of a Starship with capabilities close to what SpaceX is working towards – now a practical inevitability for the company to complete its HLS contract – brings into question the architecture NASA has proposed for Artemis. Along those lines, the SLS-launched Orion spacecraft and HLS lander (a custom variant of SpaceX’s Starship) would dock directly in lunar orbit instead of separately docking to Gateway to transfer crew. More or less simultaneously, NASA it made it clear that it was seriously studying the possibility of performing Artemis-3 – the first crewed Moon landing attempt in half a century – without Gateway. SpaceX’s Starship to return humanity to the Moon in stunning NASA decision More than a year later, very little has been said (or visibly done) to progress from that announcement to a true contract – an unusually long period of inactivity for such a significant program.

NASA first announced its selection of SpaceX for the Gateway Logistics Services (GLS) contract back in March 2020. Designed to deliver at least five metric tons (~11,000 lb) of pressurized and unpressurized cargo to Gateway, Dragon XL will launch on SpaceX’s own Falcon Heavy rocket – currently the only super heavy-lift launch vehicle in operation – and meant to heavily borrow from hardware and systems already developed for Crew and Cargo Dragon. The contract modification was made around April 1st of this year and provided SpaceX around $121,000 to complete the latest study on the potential utility of its expendable Dragon XL spacecraft beyond the primary goal of resupplying a space station orbiting the Moon. A recent modification to SpaceX’s Dragon XL lunar cargo resupply contract with NASA suggests that the spacecraft could be used as an extra crew cabin and bathroom at a lunar space station known as Gateway.

Lunark vs drakon