SpaceX to Tell NASA the Moon Will Have to Wait

SpaceX has fallen behind in developing a crewed lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, prompting the agency to reopen the contract to other providers . The added pressure has pushed SpaceX to revise its strategy, but the new approach still appears insufficient to meet NASA’s target date, leaked proprietary information suggests.

An internal SpaceX document obtained by Politico lays out a new timeline for the Starship Human Landing System (HLS)—one that would put the Artemis 3 astronauts on the Moon by September 2028 at the earliest. That’s more than a year past NASA’s mid-2027 target.

Even hitting this revised target will be a tall order given Starship’s enormous size, complex design, and the major milestones it has yet to achieve. An anonymous congressional aide told Politico tha