WASHINGTON — As NASA pushes to land a crew on the moon with the Artemis 3 mission in September 2026, the agency’s own analysis estimates a nearly one-in-three chance the lander will be delayed by at least a year and a half.
This evaluation resulted from the confirmation review for the Human Landing System (HLS) Initial Capability project, which supports the development of SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander to be used on Artemis 3. KDP) C establishes the cost and commitment schedule for NASA projects.
A confirmation review that took place in December 2023 set the February 2028 planning baseline for this project at a 70% joint confidence level. That means there’s a 70% chance Starship will be ready to land on the moon — a milestone formally known as the Lunar Orbit Control Check — by February 2028.
“The Joint Cost and Schedule Confidence Level is an integrated analysis of a project’s cost, schedule, risk, and uncertainty that shows how likely a project is to meet a given set of cost and schedule goals,” the Government Accountability Office said in its 20th report evaluating NASA’s major programs .
That date is nearly a year and a half after NASA’s current September 2026 plan for Artemis 3. The 70% joint confidence level also means the agency believes there’s a 30% chance the Starship lander won’t be ready until after February 2028. .
The confirmatory review, which NASA did not make public after completion, was mentioned in the GAO report. He noted that the schedule assessment is independent of the readiness of other aspects of the mission, such as the Space Launch System, the Orion spacecraft and the new lunar suits.
In a statement to SpaceNews, NASA confirmed the data presented in the GAO report while reiterating that Artemis 3 remains on schedule for September 2026. “The cost and schedule data in the GAO report are accurate, risk-based estimates at the 70% joint confidence level (JCL). The agency’s use of 70% JCL to inform baseline estimates is a conservative approach that assumes broad risk realization,” he said.
“NASA continues to trust SpaceX as a provider to help achieve the Artemis III mission,” the statement added.
KDP-C also set the initial HLS capacity cost at $4.9 billion at the same 70% common confidence level. This includes a $2.9 billion fixed-price contract for SpaceX, awards to SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics earlier in the project, and NASA project office costs.
Cathy Koerner, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development, reiterated the 2026 date for Artemis 3 at the June 7 meeting of the Council on Space Studies of the National Academies. This meeting took place the day after the fourth integrated test flight of the starship and its superheavy booster.
“From the status of the Human Landing System project, SpaceX continues to make great progress,” she said, referring to the latest flight and other work such as the integrated test of the elevator that astronauts will use to descend from the starship’s cabin to the surface.
However, she noted that the HLS effort faces “lots of technical challenges.” According to her, another important milestone was the test of the transfer of cryogenic propellant in space, which she said was planned for the beginning of 2025.
The GAO report also emphasized the importance of this test. During the confirmation review, the Permanent Review Board “recommended that SpaceX’s fuel transfer tests in space inform a critical review of the program design currently scheduled for 2025.”
At the Space Studies Council meeting, Koerner played down reports that NASA is considering an alternative plan that would test Starship and Orion in low Earth orbit, analogous to the Apollo 9 mission, but acknowledged that the agency is expecting contingencies.
She said NASA has done many “next worse failure” assessments, looking at what happens when one element of a mission is unavailable. “We always make backup plans like that,” she said. “We haven’t made any changes to the current plan as I’ve outlined it here today, but a lot of people are looking at a lot of backup plans, so we’re doing our due diligence.”