Ever since it was selected by NASA back in 2021 to make the lander that will take the crew of the Artemis III mission to the surface of the Moon, SpaceX has mostly kept to itself on the development of this technology, and it has very rarely shared any updates on how things are going. Imagine my surprise when, at the end of last week, the company let loose a wealth of details on what was done so far, and what's next in this program.

SpaceX's lander for the Artemis program is called the Starship Human Landing System (HLS), and, for now, it's supposed to serve the needs of two missions, Artemis III and Artemis IV. At its core sits, obviously, the Starship that's currently the star of what may very well be the world's most ambitious space tech development program.

I said earlier that ever since it was selected to make the HLS, SpaceX has been pretty tight-lipped about how things were going, and that could have had some people wondering if anything is being done at all. Turns out, quite a lot is being done, and the project is far more advanced than anyone thought.

Elon Musk's space company says that the development of the HLS has already reached no less than 49 milestones, covering everything from subsystems, infrastructure, and operations. Below is a more detailed breakdown of what was done.

First up, the lander's environmental control, life support, and thermal control systems were put through their paces on a full-scale cabin module. Apparently, SpaceX placed inside the cabin "multiple" living, breathing humans, to see how these systems inject oxygen and nitrogen, how air distribution and sanitation work, and where humidity and thermal control stand. Acoustic environments inside the cabin were also researched during these procedures.

On the safety front, the lander's ability to withstand micrometeoroid and orbital debris strikes was researched, in a bid to give engineers a better understanding of what kind of shielding, insulation, and window panels will need to be in the final design.

Because the Starship HLS will have to link up in space with the

Orion spacecraft carrying the astronauts, SpaceX also conducted tests on the docking system of the lander, which is a derivation of the one already in use on the Dragon spacecraft.

When it comes time to set down on the surface of the Moon, the HLS will have to use landing legs, and those have been tested as well, including as part of a drop test at flight energies. The goal of this procedure was to verify system performance and to study foot-to-regolith interaction.

The landing software, sensor, and radar hardware were also reviewed over the past few years. Engineers also conducted a review of the software architecture to refine vehicle control processes, the physical computers that will run the software, and things like fault detection, caution and warning alerts, and command and telemetry control.

As far as the lander's Raptor engines are concerned, cold start demonstrations using both sea-level and vacuum-optimized hardware have been conducted, as was a lunar landing throttle test to prove the HLS' ability to land on the Moon.

Finally, SpaceX, NASA, and partner company Axiom have also had a look at the lander's airlock and elevator, but also at the spacesuits astronauts will wear when they step onto the surface of the Moon, and how they may or may not affect the operation of these critical systems.

Despite the 49 milestones that have already been reached (we don't know how many of them are in all),

SpaceX has yet to build a complete HLS, and time is rapidly running out, as the Artemis III mission is scheduled to depart in about two years' time. But SpaceX is not sitting around doing nothing, and it already previewed some of the steps it plans on taking next.

First up, construction of a flight article Starship HLS cabin is already underway, and this one will be equipped with everything it needs to fly, including avionics, power, life support, and even communication systems. This piece of hardware will be used to demo the complete design right here on Earth.

An a yet-to-be-announced time, SpaceX will conduct a long-duration flight test to prove the HLS' abilities in space, but also to demo the in-space propellant transfer that will be crucial to the success of the mission and to the lander's ability to get to the surface of the Moon up to 100 tons of cargo, including humans, rovers, habitats, and supplies.

This flight test will be conducted with the V3 version of the Starship, and it's likely we'll see it happening sometime next year. The Heavy Booster will lift the Starship to a designated orbit, where the spacecraft will spend an extended period of time.

A second Starship will then follow it in orbit, and rendezvous with the first one to perform the critical ship-to-ship propellant transfer. Both ships will be equipped with docking ports to allow them to join together, but also DragonEye navigation sensors, already proven on the Dragon spacecraft, for them to be able to come close to one another.

I have to say, the HLS details SpaceX released may not be much, but at least we now know a lot more about its development than we did. Somehow, despite the company's assurances that it is moving at a historically rapid pace, I still can't shake the feeling that HLS won't be ready to land the Artemis III mission in 2027.