Hawthorne, Feb 7 (.) US’ space tech – aerospace firm SpaceX is aiming to reach the Moon as early March 2027 for the first-ever uncrewed landing of its Starship spacecraft on the Moon, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the plans.
The report said the timeline represents an ambitious technical challenge and would require frequent and largely successful test launches of Starship, the fully reusable heavy-lift rocket at the centre of SpaceX’s future exploration strategy.
To meet the company’s lunar deadline, SpaceX has reportedly chosen to prioritise its Moon programme in partnership with NASA, temporarily shelving its earlier push toward Mars missions.
Under the company’s initial plans laid out by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Starship was expected to make an unmanned journey to Mars as early as 2026, primarily to test landing safety.
That was to be followed by crewed missions and, eventually, the long-term goal of building a self-sustaining city on the Red Planet. As per the WSJ report, those ambitions have now taken a back seat currently, as the space-tech giant concentrates its resources on meeting NASA’s lunar objectives.
NASA’s Moon return effort is being carried out under the Artemis program, which was formally announced in 2019 and structured in three phases. Artemis I involved an uncrewed Orion spacecraft orbiting the Moon and returning to Earth, a mission completed between November 16 and December 11, 2022.
Artemis II will send astronauts on a crewed flyby of the Moon, while Artemis III aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface.
Originally, Artemis II and Artemis III were scheduled for 2022 and 2024. Those timelines have since slipped multiple times, with NASA announcing last December that Artemis II is now planned for April 2026, followed by Artemis III in mid-2027, a schedule that closely aligns with SpaceX’s reported goal of delivering an uncrewed Starship landing on the Moon.
. . .