Starship ship-to-ship propellent test coming March 2025

SpaceX is under pressure to keep its part of the bargain as close to the schedule as possible with providing its Starship rocket as NASA’s Artemis Human Landing System. A major component of both that mission and Starship’s Mars mission will be orbital refueling.

In an interview with Spaceflight Now, NASA’s Deputy Manager of the Human Landing System shared that the demonstration mission for ship-to-ship propellant transfer will take place in March 2025. This test would likely see two Starship upper stages dock and transfer propellant between the two, something that has never been done before with such a large vehicle.

Starship is expected to need to be refueled by a dozen or so tanker Starships ahead of future lunar landing missions under Artemis. That number will be even larger when Starship begins flights to Mars.

“That would be the first time that’s demonstrated at that scale,” Dr. Kent Chojnacki, HLS Deputy Manager, said. “So that is a big building block.”

NASA’s Artemis Program is relying heavily on SpaceX to get its Starship rocket operational before it attempts a lunar landing on Artemis 3. Currently, the agency hopes to attempt that flight in 2026, but a slip to 2027 or 2028 is more likely.

That date also relies on other parts of the Artemis Program, like Boeing’s Space Launch System and Lockheed Martin’s Orion spacecraft, to be ready for more launches. Historically, these cost-plus contracts have been the main contributors to delays in the program.

However, Starship could be another cause if the company can’t pick up the pace in developing the core part of the Starship vehicle: refueling and reusing. In the same interview, Chojnacki shared that NASA is expecting bi-weekly launches out of Starbase alone before adding in SpaceX’s planned LC-39A pads.

For now, SpaceX will need to work on getting Starship to reenter without any damage to the vehicle. While Flight 5 was much better than Flight 4, there is still work to be done in that area before Starships reach orbit.