What Elon Musk SpaceX just did to Accelerate Starship Progress SHOCKED China

What Elon Musk SpaceX just did to Accelerate Starship Progress SHOCKED China
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What Elon Musk SpaceX just did to Accelerate Starship Progress SHOCKED China
SpaceX is officially racing the clock. If Artemis 3 is to stay on schedule, Starship must pull off a lunar test flight by 2026. But here’s the catch: that’s barely two years before the real mission is set to begin. Is that short window anywhere near enough for all the testing still ahead?
SpaceX believes it is, and they’ve rolled out a sweeping plan. Not just to keep the Moon landing on track, but to make crewed missions to Mars a reality before this decade is out.
So what exactly is this bold plan?
Let’s break it down in today’s episode of Alpha Tech.
What Elon Musk SpaceX just did to Accelerate Starship Progress SHOCKED China
If SpaceX wants its Starship Human Landing System to actually touch down on the Moon, at the very least it needs a test flight that can reach lunar orbit under ideal conditions. After all, no company has ever built a Lunar lander shaped like a gigantic bullet before, and on top of that, Starship will need to pull off something far more complex: orbital refueling. That’s also a step no space agency or company has ever achieved.
That’s why a lunar orbit mission is not just important, it’s essential. And NASA is setting a similar precedent with Artemis II. Using the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft, four astronauts will fly around the Moon without landing, a mission planned for April 2026 that will last about ten days.
So if Starship HLS doesn’t begin its own preparations soon, the recent criticism might prove right. NASA officials, and even former administrator Jim Bridenstine, have already pointed fingers, saying that if Artemis III slips behind schedule, it will be largely because of SpaceX’s delays with HLS.
However, these criticisms won’t hold for long, because SpaceX already has a plan of its own.
What Elon Musk SpaceX just did to Accelerate Starship Progress SHOCKED China
In fact, the idea of sending Starship into lunar orbit isn’t new at all. It goes back to the long-planned dearMoon project, first announced in 2018, and later gaining more attention in 2021 when SpaceX officially won NASA’s contract to develop the Starship Human Landing System. The mission was designed and funded by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa in partnership with SpaceX. The goal? To take ten ordinary people, not professional astronauts, on a journey around the Moon. Interestingly, among them is Tim Dodd, better known as the Everyday Astronaut.
The mission relies entirely on Starship - SpaceX’s massive, fully reusable spacecraft that one day could carry more than 100 people on future voyages. The flight plan is based on a free-return trajectory, just like Apollo 8 and Apollo 13, meaning the spacecraft would loop around the Moon and return to Earth without the need for additional propulsion, instead using the pull of lunar gravity to sling it back home.
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