The Moon, first

In April 2026, Artemis II carried four astronauts around the Moon and back. It was the first crewed lunar flyby in more than fifty years, traveling farther from Earth than any humans before them. That mission flew on NASA's SLS and Orion; what it proved out is the path SpaceX's hardware now plugs into.

Artemis III has been reprofiled as a crewed low-Earth-orbit rendezvous-and-docking demonstration with a Starship HLS pathfinder, targeted no earlier than 2027. Its crew was announced on June 9, 2026. The first crewed lunar landing is now targeted for Artemis IV in early 2028, descending to the surface on SpaceX's Starship HLS.

The Human Landing System is a lunar variant of the same Starship that headlines the IPO story: refueled in orbit, no heat shield or flaps needed for an airless Moon, and enough cabin volume to dwarf anything that has landed there before. NASA's stated posture is risk-reduction-first, with the landing schedule gated on Starship's iterative flight tests rather than calendar pressure.

Orbital refueling, long-duration life support, precision landing on unprepared terrain, surface operations. Every one of these is a Mars prerequisite that the lunar program forces SpaceX to prove years earlier, with NASA paying part of the bill. In this site's framing: the IPO funds the ships, the Moon proves them, and Mars is where they are pointed.