Synopsis
In the paper “NASA’s Initial Artemis Human Landing System” presented at the 73rd International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Paris, France, the authors discuss the development of the Human Landing System (HLS) for NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program.
In April 2020, NASA selected three companies—Blue Origin-led team with Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Draper; Dynetics (a Leidos company); and SpaceX—to begin the initial phase of HLS development.
In the spring of 2021, NASA awarded a single follow-on Option A contract to SpaceX to continue their work on HLS Starship development. Currently, NASA and SpaceX are working collaboratively on Option A, which will ultimately culminate in one uncrewed and one crewed mission to the lunar surface under Artemis III.
The paper provides an overview of the Option A phase of development for the HLS program, including publicly available information on SpaceX’s HLS Starship design, as well as near-term and future milestones for HLS and the Artemis program.