SpaceX
SpaceX checks off 49 lunar lander milestones in push toward Artemis III
SpaceX has revealed that it has completed 49 major milestones for NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) program, marking significant progress in the development of the Starship lunar lander that will deliver astronauts to the Moon.
The updates were detailed in SpaceX’s new blog post To the Moon and Beyond, which was recently posted on the private space company’s official website.
As noted by SpaceX, the 49 milestones that were completed by its HLS team were “tied to developing the subsystems, infrastructure, and operations” needed to safely land humans back into the lunar surface. SpaceX noted that it has only received funding on contractual milestones that have been successfully completed, the vast majority of which have been achieved on time or ahead of schedule.
Following are highlights of SpaceX’s completed milestones, as per the company’s post.
For the first time in our existence, we possess the means, technology, and, for the moment, the will to establish a permanent human presence beyond Earth. Starship is designed to make this future a reality → https://t.co/dGAZiB4rr3 pic.twitter.com/WsTg44G3oz
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 30, 2025
- Lunar environmental control and life support and thermal control system demonstrations, using a full-scale cabin module inhabited by multiple people to test the capability to inject oxygen and nitrogen into the cabin environment and accurately manage air distribution and sanitation, along with humidity and thermal control. The test series also measured the acoustic environments inside the cabin
- Docking adapter qualification of the docking system that will link Starship and Orion in space, an androgynous SpaceX docking system capable of serving as the active system or passive system and based on the flight-proven Dragon 2 active docking system
- Landing leg drop test of a full-scale article at flight energies onto simulated lunar regolith to verify system performance and to study foot-to-regolith interaction
- Raptor lunar landing throttle test demonstrating a representative thrust profile that would allow Starship to land on the lunar surface
- Micrometeoroid and orbital debris testing of shielding, insulation, and window panels, analyzing different material stackups that will be used to protect Starship from impact hazards and harsh thermal conditions
- Landing software, sensor, and radar demonstrations testing navigation and sensing hardware and software that will be used by Starship to locate and safely descend to a precise landing site on the Moon
- Software architecture review to define the schematic of major vehicle control processes, what physical computers they will run on, and software functions for critical systems like fault detection, caution and warning alerts, and command and telemetry control
- Raptor cold start demonstrations using both sea-level and vacuum-optimized Raptor engines that are pre-chilled prior to startup to simulate the thermal conditions experienced after an extended time in space
- Integrated lunar mission operations plan review, covering how SpaceX and NASA will conduct integrated operations, develop flight rules and crew procedures, and the high-level mission operation plan
- Depot power module demonstration, testing prototype electrical power generation and distribution systems planned to be used on the propellant depot variant of Starship
- Ground segment and radio frequency (RF) communications demonstration, testing the capability to send and receive RF communications between a flight-equivalent ground station and a flight-equivalent vehicle RF system
- Elevator and airlock demonstration, which was conducted in concert with Axiom to utilize flight-representative pressurized EVA suits, to practice full operation of the crew elevator which will be used to transfer crew and cargo between Starship and the lunar surface
- Medical system demonstration covering the crew medical system on Starship and the telemedicine capability between the ground and crew
- Hardware in the loop testbed activation for the propellant transfer flight test which uses a testbed with flight representative hardware to run simulations for the upcoming propellant transfer flight test
Ultimately, SpaceX’s message is clear. With its plans for a simplified architecture, the timeframe of the first crewed lunar landing of the current century could happen sooner than expected.
Musk definitely seems determined to prove skeptics wrong, with the CEO declaring on X that Starship will be the vehicle that would pave the way for the buildout of a base on the Moon. “Starship will build Moonbase Alpha,” Musk wrote.
Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.
The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”
We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized.
Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2026
That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.
Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.
SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.
The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced today that the company will likely attempt to catch the Starship upper stage with its launch tower arms “in a few months.”
In a post on X, Musk wrote, “Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught.” He added that the first reflight of a Starship vehicle is expected by the end of 2026 or early 2027, describing it as “a fork in the road of history for consciousness reaching the stars.”
Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught.
First reflight of the ship will be either end of this year or early next. That will be a fork in the… https://t.co/O5g9pqrzyo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2026
Musk’s prediction comes amid ongoing progress toward full reusability of the Starship system, a two-stage rocket designed for rapid turnaround and dramatically lower launch costs. Catching the upper stage, known simply as “ship,” with the Mechazilla tower’s mechanical arms would mark a major milestone. It would allow both stages to return directly to the launch site for quick refurbishment and reuse, eliminating the need for ocean recovery.
Musk has previously signaled plans for a ship catch. In July, shortly after SpaceX’s wildly successful Starship 13 mission, he stated that the company would attempt to catch the ship with the tower on the next flight unless problems emerged in the mission data review. Earlier comments also outline conditions such as successful soft ocean landings before attempting a land recovery to minimize risk.
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The latest update from Musk adjusts this timeline to a few months, reflecting the iterative nature of the test campaign.
SpaceX has already demonstrated the tower catch technique successfully with the Super Heavy booster on a couple of occasions. The first successful booster catch occurred during Flight 5 in October 2024, when the massive first stage returned to the Starbase pad in Texas and was plucked from the air by the tower arms.
Additional catches followed on later flights, including Flight 7, proving the concept for the booster and building confidence in the system as a whole.
Achieving a similar catch for the upper stage would represent a significant step forward. The ship returns from much higher speeds and greater heat loads after orbital or near-orbital flight. Success would advance SpaceX’s goal of full and rapid reusability, potentially reducing the cost of access to orbit by a factor of 100 or more and supporting ambitions for frequent satellite deployments, lunar missions, and eventual Mars flights.
Musk has long emphasized that true reusability, refueling rather than discarding hardware, is essential for making humanity a multi-planetary species.
As SpaceX continues refining Starship through successive test flights, the coming months will test whether the ambitious catch timeline can be met. The combination of prior booster successes and improving ship landing precision suggests the company is steadily closing in on this historic capability.
SpaceX has achieved an incredible milestone by launching its 11,000th Starlink satellite into orbit.
This accomplishment occurred during the Starlink Group 17-50 mission, which lifted off on August 19 at 04:01 UTC from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Falcon 9 launches 24 @Starlink satellites from California pic.twitter.com/UscpmAxDls
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 19, 2026
A Falcon 9 rocket carried 24 Starlink V2 Mini satellites on this flight, successfully deploying them into low Earth orbit approximately one hour after liftoff. The first stage booster, identified as B1097 on its twelfth flight, landed successfully on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.
According to tracking data compiled around that date, this deployment brought the total number of Starlink satellites in orbit to just over 11,000.
The Starlink program began with test satellites known as Tintin A and B, launched on February 22, 2018. The first operational batch of 60 Starlink satellites followed on May 24, 2019, when a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral. Those initial satellites marked the start of a rapid expansion that has continued for more than seven years.
SpaceX has conducted hundreds of dedicated Starlink missions since then, routinely launching batches of 20 to 30 satellites at a time using reusable Falcon 9 rockets. By mid-2026, the company had already surpassed 12,000 total satellites launched across all versions, with continuous replacements for units that deorbit as designed to manage space debris.
Looking ahead, SpaceX continues to expand the Starlink constellation to enhance global broadband coverage, capacity, and speed. The network already serves millions of users across more than 160 countries and supports applications ranging from residential internet to maritime, aviation, and emergency services.
Future plans center on next-generation hardware, including larger V3 satellites capable of delivering substantially higher throughput, which require the increased payload capacity of the Starship vehicle currently under development and testing.
In July, SpaceX submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission seeking authority for a Gen3 constellation of up to 100,000 satellites. These spacecraft would operate in very low Earth orbit shells at altitudes near 325 kilometers and 475 kilometers. The filing requests use of existing Ku, Ka, V, and E band spectrum along with new greenfield W and D band frequencies between 92 and 275 GHz.
SpaceX states that the expanded system aims to deliver multi-gigabit symmetrical broadband to consumers, enterprises, governments, and billions of AI-powered devices worldwide while handling a majority of global internet traffic. Approval and subsequent deployment would depend on regulatory review and the operational readiness of Starship for high-volume launches.
This ambitious scale reflects SpaceX’s ongoing commitment to providing ubiquitous high-speed connectivity from space.
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