A new watchdog report has found that Kennedy Space Center, the premier spaceport for NASA and its commercial partners, isn’t ready to support increased super-heavy launch cadence. If the agency hopes to land humans on the Moon by 2028, it will need to fix that problem fast. NASA has tapped both SpaceX and Blue Origin to provide prospective crew landers for the Artemis 4 mission, which will attempt to deliver two astronauts to the lunar surface. SpaceX’s lander, the Starship Human Landing System (HLS), will be a modified version of the Starship V3 upper stage. Building it has proved challenging enough (the lander is significantly behind schedule), but actually getting it to the Moon will be another feat entirely—one that outdated Kennedy infrastructure may not be able to handle. The report, published by the NASA Office of the Inspector General on Monday, states that SpaceX plans to launch Starship up to 44 times per year from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy. This would allow for an eight-day launch cadence, which will be necessary as SpaceX must launch at least 15 Starships before the HLS can take astronauts to the Moon. Those 15 missions will deliver propellant to low Earth orbit, where it will be stored in a fuel depot before being transferred to the HLS.
NASA's Moon Plan Depends on 15 Starship Launches. There's Just One Problem
Drastically increased launch cadence from SpaceX and NASA's other commercial partners is straining aging infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center, a new report finds.
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