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Do we know how many Starship launches SpaceX will need to get NASA astronauts to the moon? No. Will its refuelling plan be simple? Also no.
If you liked Starship in LEO (low Earth orbit), you're going to love Starship in the new FTO (final tanking orbit).
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NASA's Artemis IV moon mission will be a complicated affair — especially if SpaceX's Starship ends up being the lunar lander.
For all of the changing components of the Artemis program over the past several years, one of its most persistent may be the question of how many refueling flights Starship will need to land astronauts on the moon.
By summer 2021, it was common knowledge that Starship would require multiple launches to pull off an Artemis moon landing. A Government Accountability Office audit at the time, for example, estimated that it could take up to 16.
Earlier this month, a member of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said the refueling number could be as high as 22. But that estimate was quickly refuted by SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, who posted on his social media platform, X, that it would actually be closer to six or eight.
Perhaps an even bigger head scratcher, though, is how the refueling process will be carried out. Where (and when) will Starship's upper stage gas up when it's off planet? NASA released a graphic during a recent Artemis update that outlined an order of operations for the spacecraft on Artemis IV, which will be the program's first crewed lunar landing.
The mission will launch a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the four Artemis IV astronauts aboard NASA's Orion capsule to high Earth orbit, where they will rendezvous and dock with the Starship lunar lander.
Using Starship's engines, the two spacecraft will burn for the moon, and separate upon their arrival in low lunar orbit. Two astronauts will remain aboard Orion, while the other two will head down to the lunar surface in Starship.
After a little run through the regolith and a celebration of America's triumphant return to the moon, the duo will board Starship again to launch back to lunar orbit and dock with Orion before beginning the trip back to Earth.