News
SpaceX, NASA finalize contract for second crewed Starship Moon landing
Around eight months after announcing its intention to do so, NASA has awarded SpaceX a contract for a second crewed Starship Moon landing as early as 2027.
Known as Option B, NASA has exercised a baked-in right to modify its Human Landing System (HLS) Option A contract with SpaceX – signed in April 2021 – to extract even more value from investments into the program. In addition to an uncrewed Starship Moon landing planned no earlier than (NET) 2024 and a crewed demonstration that could land two NASA astronauts on the Moon as early as 2025, NASA’s contract modification gives SpaceX the approval and resources it needs to prepare for a second crewed Starship Moon landing.
On top of securing NASA’s Artemis IV mission astronauts a ride to the lunar surface, the Option B contract will also allow SpaceX and NASA to pursue and demonstrate upgrades that will make Starship an even more capable and cost-effective Moon lander.
Update: NASA says that the Option B modification will cost $1.15 billion, raising the maximum value of SpaceX’s HLS contract to approximately $4.2 billion.
When NASA first announced its intention to add a second crewed Moon landing to SpaceX’s existing HLS contract, the agency couldn’t offer specific information about when that landing might occur or which Artemis mission it would be attached to. Part of the reason for that uncertainty was another announcement two months prior that NASA no longer expected a Moon landing to be paired with its Artemis IV (4) mission. And five days after a March 2022 announcement of plans for a second crewed Starship Moon landing, NASA seemingly reaffirmed that there would be a multi-year gap between Starship’s first crewed Moon landing (NET 2025; tied to Artemis III) and NASA’s second crewed Moon landing, which would use an unspecified lander.
But as of November 2022, NASA has thankfully abandoned plans to intentionally allow a gap between Moon landings. SpaceX’s Starship is now on contract to support back-to-back crewed Moon landings NET 2025 and 2027 as part of NASA’s Artemis III and Artemis IV missions. It’s unclear how or why NASA was able to make that change, but it’s a definite improvement over the alternative.
Additionally, NASA will work with SpaceX to debut new capabilities and improvements on Starship’s second crewed Moon landing. While the Artemis III landing will be about as barebones as possible, the Artemis IV Starship will be upgraded with the ability to transport more NASA astronauts (four instead of just two) and more cargo to the lunar surface. It’s not entirely clear, but NASA reportedly wants to land just ~180 kilograms (~400 lb) of cargo with the first crewed Starship, a vehicle likely capable of landing dozens of tons of cargo in addition to several astronauts. NASA hopes that future “sustainable” lander missions, a category that Starship’s Option B landing may or may not fall under, will transport up to one ton (~2200 lb) of cargo to and from the lunar surface.
Finally, the Artemis IV Starship will also be able to dock with NASA’s Lunar Gateway. Gateway is a small deep space station that will be located in a strange, high lunar orbit. It exists almost exclusively to give NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion crew capsule a destination they can both reach. The Orion capsule is almost twice as heavy as its Apollo counterpart and its European Service Module (ESM) offers less than half the performance of NASA’s retired Apollo Service Module. Combined, Orion is physically incapable of transporting itself (or astronauts) to the simpler low lunar orbits used by the Apollo Program.
Instead, NASA’s new Moon lander(s) have to pick up Orion’s slack. Starship will be responsible for picking up astronauts in a lunar near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), transporting them to low lunar orbit, and returning them to NRHO in addition to landing on the Moon, spending a week on the surface, and launching back into lunar orbit.
Until it’s modestly upgraded in the late 2020s or 2030s, Gateway will be equally underwhelming. In fact, that’s part of the reason that Starship docking with the Gateway is in any way significant. SpaceX and NASA have decades of expertise docking and berthing spacecraft with space stations. But those spacecraft are typically smaller and lighter than the stations they were joining. Even after the Gateway is fully outfitted with a range of international modules, Starship will likely weigh several times more than the tiny station, making docking even more challenging than it already is.
Starship’s Moon lander variant could also have a cabin with hundreds of cubic meters of habitable space, while the Gateway is unlikely to ever have more than a few dozen. Having a Starship docked would thus immediately make the ultra-cramped station far more livable.
NASA says Artemis IV and the second crew Starship Moon landing will occur as early as 2027. But a ‘space prophet’ who predicted in 2017 that NASA’s SLS launch debut would slip from 2019 to “around 2023” and forecasted that SpaceX alone would win NASA’s Moon lander contract recently told Ars Technica’s Eric Berger that Artemis III, the mission before Artemis IV, is unlikely to launch before 2028. At the time, that source’s predictions verged on blasphemy, but they’ve ultimately proven to be eerily accurate. Only time will tell if their third ‘prophecy’ follows the same path.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX is launching a secret spacecraft that could change how things are made in space
SpaceX’s secret disk-shaped Starfall capsule is targeting a market no reentry vehicle has cracked.
SpaceX is targeting Tuesday, June 23 for the first flight of Starfall, a reentry capsule the company has developed almost entirely in private. The Falcon 9 launch window opens at 6:43 a.m. ET from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with a backup window available the same time on June 24. SpaceX has made no public announcement about the vehicle, only providing launch details. Everything known about it has come through FAA and FCC regulatory filings.
What makes Starfall different starts with its shape. Rather than the traditional cone used by Dragon and every other cargo return capsule in operation, Starfall is a flat disk that measures roughly 10.2 feet (3.1 meters) wide and just 2.5 feet (0.75 meters) tall, and weighing 4,630 pounds (2,100 kg) and capable of returning up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of payload from orbit. The disk geometry maximizes structural efficiency and payload volume relative to mass, and the heat shield mechanically jettisons just before splashdown, allowing recovery teams to retrieve both the capsule and the shield separately from the Pacific Ocean.
The difference with Starfall from existing competitors, such as Varda Space Industries, which has largely built the orbital manufacturing market and returns heavy payloads per flight is that Starfall’s specification is roughly 30 times more per mission, and is designed to be mass-produced and launched on either Falcon 9 or Starship. That combination of volume and launch access is something no standalone startup can replicate, and it puts SpaceX in direct competition with the companies that currently pay it to reach orbit.
SpaceX to launch military missile tracking satellites through new Space Force contract
The intended market is orbital manufacturing: pharmaceuticals, protein crystals, semiconductors, and advanced optical fiber that physically cannot be produced in the presence of gravity. FAA documents describe Starfall’s long-term purpose as building a “self-sustaining commercial in-space manufacturing market” and as a potential successor to the industrial capabilities of the International Space Station, which is set to retire in the late 2020s. Military rapid global cargo delivery is a parallel application under active discussion with the Pentagon.
The reason some industries seek manufacturing in space comes down to gravity. On Earth, gravity causes materials to settle, separate, and deform during production. In microgravity, those constraints disappear.
SpaceX’s already controls launch access, which means it currently functions as the landlord for every competitor in the orbital manufacturing return space. Starfall converts that landlord position into vertical ownership, and it would no longer just carry other companies’ capsules to orbit, but rather operate the capsule, own the return logistics, and capture the service revenue directly. Viewed alongside Starlink, Colossus, and the xAI merger, Starfall fits a consistent pattern: SpaceX identifying infrastructure layers that others depend on and moving to own them outright. Orbital manufacturing return is the next layer on that list.
If Tuesday’s reentry, parachute sequence, and recovery demonstration goes as planned, the second FAA-approved test flight follows. A successful pair of demos would position SpaceX to begin offering Starfall as a commercial service, likely first to pharmaceutical and materials science customers before scaling toward the military and broader manufacturing segments.
The Tesla Semi was spotted mounted with ground truth validation equipment as the company nears its looming launch. The Semi is Tesla’s Class 8 all-electric truck, and has been utilized in its earlier stages by many companies like PepsiCo. and Frito-Lay, who have been using it in a pilot program.
The Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale, California, and sports a typical ground truth validation unit that Tesla routinely uses on its vehicles. Ground truth validation is essentially the process of training supervised algorithms to ensure they can perform reliably. Tesla typically performs this on vehicles that are being released soon:
Spotted the new semi adorned with ground truthing equipment. Haven’t seen anyone post this so figured I’d share.
The future is autonomous!!@SawyerMerritt @wholemars pic.twitter.com/qkPDHPUQZ6
— Danny (@dannywinner1) June 21, 2026
The Semi being spotted with this type of validation rig is important because it means the company is working on solidifying a Full Self-Driving model for its commercial vehicle offering. This would be a massive development for not only Tesla but also the logistics industry as a whole.
There are strict regulations on driving hours for commercial truck drivers, and autonomy is a way to potentially combat these issues. FSD is already a widely effective way that owners of typical passenger vehicles take stress out of travel. Even launching a semi-autonomous platform for truck drivers to use to increase safety, reduce fatigue, and increase productivity would be a huge development.
Tesla Semi gets strange-but-understandable comparison from Jay Leno
The Semi has already proven to be an ideal solution for companies that use commercial logistics. It has increased efficiency and reduced operating costs for many companies that have been able to use it in pilot programs.
There are expected to be some bumps along the way. Tesla saw some challenges with FSD on the Cybertruck, as it had never had a vehicle with cameras at that height, so some of the features with FSD were not immediately available. Just a week ago, Tesla launched Actually Smart Summon (ASS) for Cybertruck, nearly three years after the vehicle was first delivered to customers.
President Donald Trump unveiled an upgraded Boeing 747-8 at Joint Base Andrews on June 19, 2026, describing the Qatar-gifted aircraft as an interim Air Force One equipped with advanced communications systems, including Starlink, Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellite internet service.
The plane, valued at around $400 million and modified for presidential use, serves as a bridge until the delayed VC-25B replacements arrive. Trump highlighted its luxury features and new technology during remarks to service members.
Trump stated:
“We have communication equipment up there that nobody’s ever seen before. It’s the highest level and, uh, including Starlink. My friend Elon is going to be very happy, but, uh, Starlink and we have, uh, four or five different sets of double and triple communications like people haven’t seen.”
He added:
“And it represents what can happen with hard work, innovation, and aggressive timelines because we did this quickly and yet there’s never been communication like is on this plane.”
🚨 President Trump confirmed today that the new Air Force One is equipped with Starlink:
“We have communication equipment up there that nobody’s ever seen before, it’s the highest level and including Starlink…my friend Elon is going to be very happy.” pic.twitter.com/IhkDmtr5hL
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 20, 2026
The aircraft features a redesigned red, white, and blue livery and has been outfitted with Starlink satellite connectivity alongside other secure systems.
Trump praised the plane’s uniqueness, calling it among the world’s most luxurious. The gift from Qatar and subsequent modifications have drawn attention, with the jet positioned as a solution for presidential travel. It is expected to support operations, including potential ceremonial roles such as Fourth of July flyovers.
The event marked the formal introduction of the converted jet, which will help maintain capabilities while the primary Air Force One fleet undergoes modernization. Defense observers note the inclusion of commercial satellite technology like Starlink as part of efforts to ensure resilient communications, crucial to keep the country running as the President is in the sky.
President Trump’s comments underscored appreciation for rapid upgrades and innovation in equipping the aircraft. The plane remains a U.S. government asset and is slated for eventual transfer related to presidential library purposes after its service.
SpaceX is launching a secret spacecraft that could change how things are made in space
Tesla Semi spotted with ground truth validation equipment as launch looms
