Starship lunar landing may need 22 launches, report says

NASA's Artemis programme may need a much larger Starship refuelling campaign than earlier estimates suggested. Ars Technica reports that Charlie Precourt, a former NASA astronaut and member of the agency's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, put the latest figure at 22 Starship launches to support one lunar landing mission. ¹

That number covers the launches needed to place and fill a propellant depot in low Earth orbit before a Starship-based lunar lander can travel to the Moon, land and return to lunar orbit. It is not a prediction that all 22 launches would happen in one burst: the architecture depends on repeated tanker flights and reliable orbital transfer operations.

Earlier estimates were lower. NASA officials had previously described the requirement as somewhere between the high single digits and low double digits, which would have meant roughly one depot flight plus around 11 tankers. The new figure suggests that improvements in Starship's lift capacity and in-orbit refuelling performance have not yet reduced the campaign as quickly as hoped. ¹

Why the number matters

The launch count is one of the most important practical questions hanging over NASA's plan to use SpaceX's Starship as a human lunar lander. Every tanker flight adds another launch, rendezvous, docking and propellant-transfer operation that must work. A larger campaign also leaves less room for delays, weather problems or hardware failures before Artemis missions need the lander.

Ars Technica says some NASA officials are concerned that Starship may not improve its lift capacity quickly enough for the vehicle to play a meaningful role in returning humans to the Moon this decade. The figure comes from a safety-panel discussion rather than a final NASA mission requirement, so it should be treated as a current estimate, not a locked schedule. ¹

NASA's official Artemis material provides the wider lunar-exploration context, while its Moon-and-Mars artwork is used here as an illustrative image rather than a depiction of the Starship vehicle. ²

Our opinion

The striking part of the 22-launch estimate is not simply that it is large; it is that the number exposes how dependent a lunar Starship mission is on a chain of operations that has not yet been demonstrated at this scale. SpaceX can eventually make a high launch cadence look routine, but a lunar landing campaign needs that cadence, dependable refuelling and a working lander together. Until those pieces are proven, the estimate is a useful warning against treating a target date as an engineering plan.