Takeaways about what NASA is saying about Starship progress for Artemis

Video Description

It might be overlooked between the Starship flight test spectaculars and Elon Musk's ambitions to send ships to Mars in the 2026 planetary window, but Starship is still central to NASA's plans to land two astronauts on the Moon on Artemis III. The press conference that the space agency held back in early December started with announcing their decision about the Orion heatshield for Artemis II, but they also spent time answering questions about Starship HLS progress for Artemis III. In this video, I go over my takeaways from the press conference about what NASA said about Starship development for Artemis III and the overall situation for the first Artemis lunar landing mission. After that, I'll highlight what NASA leadership said about the possible roles that Starship and SpaceX might play in very next Artemis mission. NASA is still planning for Artemis II to launch in about a year, but they also talked about different ideas for testing that might be possible with a SpaceX Starship in space at the same time as Orion and its four-person crew circumnavigates the Moon. Imagery is courtesy of NASA, except where noted. 00:00 Intro 00:59 Tremendous progress still simultaneous with uncertainty about Starship Artemis III schedule 07:09 NASA looking at adding Starship tests to Artemis II 08:16 Some background into why NASA is looking bringing Starship into Artemis sooner 13:29 Elaborating on some early ideas for Starship and Artemis II 19:28 Summarizing the takeaways 21:37 Thanks for watching!