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.

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