Leaked Document Shows Elon Musk’s SpaceX Will Miss Moon Landing Deadline. Here's What To Know

According to the original Artemis plan, we should have already put people on the Moon. Artemis III should have gone and come back by now. Instead, it is currently tentatively scheduled for no earlier than mid-2027. However, the mission is almost certain to be delayed again. The reason for the delay lies with SpaceX's Starship rocket: a leaked memo states that the vehicle won’t be ready until mid-2028, at least.

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During the first Trump administration, the mission to bring humans back to the Moon was christened Artemis. It was going to involve the already-in-construction Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule, as well as a privately built Human Landing System. Orion and SLS were tested with Artemis I in 2022.

The original selection for the Human Landing System spacecraft was SpaceX's then-planned Starship. This actually created legal troubles for NASA. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, a rival space company, filed a complaint in federal court against NASA, escalating its original complaint that NASA unfairly awarded the lunar lander contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

At the time, the legal trouble seemed to be a major delaying factor. Issues with the spacesuit designs and problems with the heatshield of Orion added to the delays of both crewed missions: Artemis II, which will launch next year and travel around the Moon, and Artemis III, the mission that is going to bring the first woman and first person of color to the surface of the Moon. The next Moon landing was first envisioned to happen in 2024, then this year, and then it was postponed to next year. At the end of 2024, a mid-2027 date was put down, which remains the currently agreed target.

Before that agreement, an analysis published over a year ago by the US Government Accountability Office was skeptical that it would be possible to make that date, and posited it would be pushed to 2028. The major delaying factor now is Starship. The vehicle suffered multiple explosions this year. Despite the most recent successes, the vehicle is well behind schedule to safely carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon's surface and back.

A few weeks ago, acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy went on TV to announce that the space agency was open to other companies to provide a lunar landing system. “[SpaceX and Musk] push their timelines out, and we’re in a race against China,” Duffy told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” at the time. “So, I’m going to open up the contract. I’m going to let other space companies compete with SpaceX.”

The only company that is ready to compete is Blue Origin. The company has not been advertising what they have been doing with their Blue Moon human lander, but it is expected that an actual space test will happen in the first half of next year. Blue Moon is supposed to be delivered in 2030 for Artemis V.

Elon Musk did not take the news of NASA shopping around well. He turned to social media to post school-yard insults regarding Duffy (called him “Sean Dummy”) and wrote that: “The person responsible for America's space program can't have a 2-digit IQ.” Duffy retorted that “great companies shouldn’t be afraid of a challenge.” 

In the leaked memo reported by Audrey Decker at Politico, SpaceX will be ready to land humans on the Moon in September 2028, more than a year after the mid-2027 goal of NASA. Before that, Starship needs to demonstrate in-space refueling, currently scheduled for June 2026, and an uncrewed landing on the Moon in June 2027.

To make that schedule work, nothing can go wrong. While Starship has achieved certain success as defined by the specific tests from SpaceX, it has yet to demonstrate the capabilities of flying to space and landing back on Earth safely. To state the obvious, a safe landing is the crucial part of a Lunar Human landing system.

NASA’s plans for the Moon missions continue to shift. The Trump administration’s budget has proposed canceling SLS, Orion, and the Lunar Gateway – the next-gen international space station currently under construction to replace the ISS – that is supposed to orbit the Moon to help facilitate both Moon landings nd further space travel. The administration's goal is to rely more on commercial partners, but it's an ever-changing race which ones they will be.