NASA’S Human Landing System: Demonstrating the Capability to Land Artemis Astronauts on the Moon by 2028

NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) program, managed out of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
Ala., is working with United States industry to develop and demonstrate the capability to land crew and large cargo
on the Moon in support of the U. S. Administration’s goal of landing astronauts on the Moon by 2028. The HLS
program is working with SpaceX to develop a variant of its Starship as an HLS and with Blue Origin to develop its
Blue Moon MK2 to serve as an HLS for a series of increasingly challenging Artemis missions. The HLS program is
making progress toward the first crewed lunar landing of the Artemis program by performing risk reduction and testing activities where needed, such as carrying out the largest ground-based study of plume-surface interaction (PSI) in history. A particularly impactful aspect of the program is making NASA engineers, subject matter experts (SMEs), and facilities available to SpaceX and Blue Origin through collaborations and Government Task Agreements (GTAs). Both companies have taken advantage of collaborations with NASA experts and GTAs at specialized facilities at nearly every NASA center. These public-private partnerships are advancing technology readiness and reducing risks in key areas, such as cryogenic valve development, cryogenic fluid management (CFM), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), wind tunnel testing, vibrational testing of avionics and other electronic equipment, thermal testing and modeling of various materials, and more. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin have made significant progress on lander development for both crew and large cargo during the past year. This paper will review progress the HLS program and its commercial providers have made during the past year and look ahead to significant developments leading up to the first Artemis missions using the human landing systems currently under development.