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SpaceX’s Starship Moon lander passes NASA review alongside Blue Origin, Dynetics
A variant of SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft optimized to land NASA astronauts on the Moon has passed the space agency’s first review alongside competing teams lead by Blue Origin and Dynetics.
Aside from reiterating the fact that NASA is drawing heavily from its experience with the Commercial Crew Program (CCP), the completion of “certification baseline reviews” for Blue Origin, Dynetics, and SpaceX’s proposed lunar landers is a significant step forward for the Human Landing System (HLS) and Artemis programs. According to NASA’s official HLS “Broad Agency Announcement” or BAA, providers must submit a vast amount of paperwork and data to pass the certification baseline review (CBR).
NASA’s acceptance criteria for CBR documentation is about as general as the space agency gets, requiring providers to demonstrate at least a basic level of maturity and expertise. Like the name suggests, it sets a baseline from which NASA and SpaceX, Dynetics, and Blue Origin’s National Team will hone in on challenges and concerns specific to each system. SpaceX’s proposal is almost certainly unique, however, given that the company is the only one anywhere close to performing actual flight tests of a (relatively) similar system.
After much fanfare, NASA finally revealed its first real Human Landing System contracts on April 30th, 2020, awarding funds to Blue Origin, Dynetics, and SpaceX to develop three extremely dissimilar Moon landers. Designed to ferry NASA astronauts from a deserted lunar orbit (near-rectilinear halo orbit, NRHO). NASA initially refused to delineate the distribution of the $967 million contract.
Several news outlets later reported that Blue Origin’s “National Team” (including Draper, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman) received $567 million to develop a complex three-stage system, using Blue Origin’s existing Blue Moon lander work for the final descent stage and lander. Dynetics won $253 million to build a slightly more familiar single-stage lander and SpaceX received $135 million for a single-stage Starship-derived vehicle.
The main goal of NASA’s initial funding is to extensively characterize and understand the capabilities and characteristics of each proposal and the likelihood that each vehicle will actually be ready to land humans on the Moon by the end of 2024. The next major HLS milestone will be what the space agency calls a “continuation review,” in which NASA will likely downselect to one of the three landers above. Administrator Jim Bridenstine says that NASA may decide to proceed with more than one provider but the strong implication is that only one will exit the ~December 2020 continuation review with future funding.
For SpaceX, it appears that the company will almost certainly field an orbit-capable Starship and Super Heavy booster with or without external help. At this point in the program, it would take a major upset for SpaceX not to be ready to start orbital Starship launch attempts in 2021. To an extent, SpaceX has proven through Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Crew Dragon that it’s capable of developing reliable, reusable, industry-leading rockets and spacecraft several times more cheaply than its closest competitors.
To build a Starship safe and reliable enough that SpaceX can convince NASA to land astronauts on the Moon with it, the company will effectively have to prove that it can cut the cost of rocket production by another factor of five or ten. Time will tell where NASA’s HLS cards fall just a few months from now.
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NASA has filed a procurement notice announcing its intent to add six post-certification missions to SpaceX’s existing Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract. The agency said it would order up to three of those missions immediately upon adding them to the contract, with the remaining three available as needed through the end of the International Space Station’s planned operations in 2030.
The reason for the expansion is straightforward. NASA cited recently shortened ISS mission durations, technical issues and schedule delays encountered by Boeing, the allocation of missions between Boeing and SpaceX, and the ongoing technical challenges of maintaining a reliable crew transportation capability as the driving factors behind the decision. Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has still not been certified for crewed flights, and a cargo-only Starliner mission was not included on NASA’s most recent mission manifest. With Boeing effectively sidelined for the foreseeable future, SpaceX is the only American company capable of rotating crews to the station.
The history behind this contract tells the fuller story of how SpaceX got here. NASA originally awarded SpaceX its Commercial Crew contract in 2014 for $2.6 billion. In 2022 NASA modified the contract to add five missions covering Crew-10 through Crew-14, worth $1.436 billion, bringing the total contract value at that point to $4.9 billion. The recent May 18 filing by NASA extends that runway further, with Crew-12 currently docked at the station and Crew-13 assigned and targeting a mid-September 2026 launch.
According to a report by SpaceNews, NASA stated in its filing: “It is necessary to award additional PCMs to SpaceX given the recently shortened ISS mission durations, technical issues and schedule delays encountered by Boeing, the allocation of missions between Boeing and SpaceX, NASA’s projections for when an alternative crew transportation system may become available, and the ongoing technical challenges of maintaining a reliable capability for crewed flights to ISS.”
No dollar value for the new six missions has been publicly confirmed yet, but based on the 2022 precedent of roughly $287 million per mission, the new block could represent close to $1.7 billion in additional contract value. With SpaceX simultaneously preparing Starship as NASA’s Artemis lunar lander, filing its S-1 for a June IPO, and now absorbing more ISS crew rotation work, the company’s role as the primary contractor for American human spaceflight is no longer a matter of circumstance. It is NASA policy.
In a notable intersection of Big Tech powerhouses, Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, has partnered with Canadian energy infrastructure giant Enbridge on a significant renewable energy initiative that will rely on battery technology from Elon Musk’s Tesla.
The project, which was announced this week, marks another step in Meta’s aggressive push to power its expanding data center operations with clean energy, dispelling many of the complaints people have about them.
This new development is located near Cheyenne, Wyoming, and will feature a 365-megawatt (MW) solar farm paired with a 200 MW/1,600 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery energy storage system, also known as BESS. Tesla is providing the batteries for the project, valued at roughly $200 million.
The story was originally reported by Utility Dive.
This Wyoming project represents the first phase of Enbridge and Meta’s joint “Cowboy Project.” Once operational, it will deliver power to Meta’s regional data centers through Cheyenne Light, Fuel, and Power under Wyoming’s Large Power Contract Service tariff.
This tariff, originally developed in collaboration with Microsoft and Black Hills Energy, is designed specifically for large loads like data centers. It ensures that the renewable supply serves hyperscale customers without impacting retail electricity rates for other users.
The battery system will operate under a long-term tolling agreement, providing dispatchable capacity that enhances grid reliability. During periods of high demand, the utility can access the backup generation, addressing one of the key challenges of integrating large-scale renewables with the explosive growth of data center electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence.
This latest collaboration builds on prior joint efforts between Enbridge and Meta in Texas, including the 600 MW Clear Fork Solar, 152 MW Easter Wind, and 300 MW Cone Wind projects. Together with the Wyoming initiative, the companies have now partnered on roughly 1.6 gigawatts (GW) of combined solar, wind, and storage capacity.
The deal highlights the intensifying demand for reliable, low-carbon power from technology giants. Meta has committed to supporting its data center growth with renewable energy, joining peers like Microsoft and Google in seeking large-scale solutions. Enbridge’s Allen Capps described the project as “one of the larger utility-scale battery installations supporting U.S. data center operations and growth.”
The involvement of Tesla’s battery technology adds an intriguing layer, linking two of the world’s most prominent tech leaders—Zuckerberg and Musk—in the clean energy transition.
As data centers continue to drive unprecedented electricity load growth across the United States, projects like this one illustrate how hyperscalers are turning to strategic partnerships with traditional energy players and innovative storage solutions to meet both sustainability goals and reliability needs.
SpaceX has decided to stand down from what was supposed to be the first test launch of Starship’s v3 rocket tonight after a minor issue with a hydraulic pin delayed the flight once more.
The company scrubbed its first test flight of the upgraded Starship v3 on May 21 in the final minutes of the countdown. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk quickly took to social media platform X, explaining that a hydraulic pin on the launch tower’s “chopsticks” arm failed to retract properly.
Musk added that the company would fix the issue this evening. SpaceX will attempt another launch tomorrow night at 5:30 p.m. CT, 6:30 p.m. ET, and 3:30 p.m. PT.
The hydraulic pin holding the tower arm in place did not retract.
If that can be fixed tonight, there will be another launch attempt tomorrow at 5:30 CT. https://t.co/DJAdvDYQpH
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2026
The countdown for Starship Flight 12 — featuring the taller and more capable V3 stack with Booster 19 and Ship 39 — had been progressing smoothly until the late-stage issue surfaced. The Mechazilla tower arm, designed to secure the vehicle on the pad and eventually catch returning boosters, could not complete its retraction sequence.
SpaceX teams immediately began troubleshooting the hydraulic system for an overnight repair.
Starship V3 introduces several significant upgrades over earlier versions. These include greater propellant capacity, more powerful Raptor 3 engines, larger grid fins, enhanced heat shielding, and an improved fuel transfer system.
We covered the changes that were announced just days ago by SpaceX:
SpaceX unveils sweeping Starship V3 upgrades ahead of May 19 launch
The changes are intended to increase payload performance, support higher flight rates, and advance the vehicle toward operational missions, including Starlink deployments, NASA Artemis lunar landings, and future crewed Mars flights. The debut flight from Starbase’s new Launch Pad 2 marked an important milestone in scaling up the fully reusable Starship system.
This stand-down highlights the intricate challenges of preparing the world’s most powerful rocket for flight. Despite extensive pre-launch checks, a single component in the ground support equipment can force a scrub.
The incident aligns with Starship’s proven iterative development approach. Previous test flights have encountered both successes and setbacks, each providing critical data that refines hardware and procedures. Some outlets may call some of these flights “failures,” when in reality, they are all opportunities for SpaceX to learn for the next attempt.
With V3, SpaceX aims to reduce ground-system dependencies and increase launch cadence to meet ambitious long-term goals.
NASA just gave SpaceX more crew missions because Boeing can’t certify
Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12
