Starship HLS, or Starship Human Landing System, is a lunar lander variant of the Starship spacecraft that will transfer astronauts from a lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back.
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11 Facts About Starship HLS
2.
The updated Starship HLS would be used for the Artemis V mission and would compete with landers to be procured from other vendors for later landings.
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3.
Starship HLS is a variant of SpaceX's Starship spacecraft optimized to operate on and around the Moon.
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4.
Starship HLS is supplied with electrical power by a band of solar panels around the circumference of the vehicle.
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5.
Starship HLS requires in-orbit propellant transfer in its mission profile.
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6.
SpaceX Starship HLS concept was initially conceived in the early 2010s as a spacecraft that would be principally built for the Mars colonization effort that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has advocated since 2011, with the first colonists arriving no earlier than the middle of the 2020s.
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7.
Starship itself has been in privately-funded development by SpaceX since the mid-2010s, but the HLS variant is being developed under contracts with the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration .
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8.
The initial contracted design work started in May 2020, with selection and funding for full-development occurring in April 2021, when Starship HLS was selected by NASA to land "the first woman and the next man" on the Moon during the Artemis 3 mission, potentially as early as 2024.
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9.
Starship HLS is intended to dock in a NRHO lunar orbit with either the NASA Orion spacecraft or NASA lunar Gateway space station, in order to take on passengers before descending to the lunar surface and return them after ascent.
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10.
The other landers in consideration were Dynetics Starship HLS, developed by aerospace manufacturer Dynetics, and the Integrated Lander Vehicle, developed by a team led by Blue Origin.
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11.
On 16 April 2021, NASA selected only Starship HLS for crewed lunar lander development plus two lunar demonstration flights – one uncrewed and one crewed – no earlier than 2024.
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