NASA has quietly made some of the biggest changes yet to how astronauts will land on the Moon in 2028. In an update published on October 23, the agency explained that both of its commercial lunar landers, SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon, have streamlined designs and new flight plans aimed at getting crews to the surface faster.

AP followed up on October 25 with comments NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman made at a Kennedy Space Center news conference, where he said the agency is adopting Apollo-style urgency. Here is what changed, based on NASA’s announcement and AP’s reporting.

Goodbye, halo orbit

Under the old plan, Orion and the lunar landers would meet in a near-rectilinear halo orbit, a long, looping path around the Moon. That orbit is now out for the first landing missions. Instead, Orion and each lander will meet in a different orbit chosen to suit each company’s system.

As before, Artemis astronauts will launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard Orion on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. A lander will link up with Orion, take two crew members to the surface and bring them back, while the other two stay aboard Orion.

The Starship plan: dock near Earth, then go

SpaceX is sticking with its “gas station in space” approach. Several tanker Starships will launch to low Earth orbit and transfer super-cold propellant to a depot Starship, which will then fuel the Starship lander.

The big change comes next. Instead of flying to the Moon alone and waiting for Orion there, the Starship lander will wait for Orion in Earth orbit. The two will dock, and then Starship will fire its engines for the trans-lunar injection burn, pushing the combined Starship-and-Orion stack all the way to low lunar orbit. NASA says it is modifying Orion so Starship can do this.

According to NASA, using low lunar orbit significantly reduces how much propellant Starship needs to gather in space, and it shortens the time it takes astronauts leaving the surface to get back to Orion.

The Blue Origin plan: three stages, no refuelling yet

Blue Origin is taking a different route for its accelerated 2028 mission. It will defer in-space propellant transfer and instead use three transfer stages, based on existing Mark 1 and Mark 2 hardware, to send its Blue Moon Mark 2 “Alpha” lander to the Moon.

The stages work like a multistage rocket: they launch to low Earth orbit, the lander joins them, and the stack heads for an elliptical polar orbit around the Moon, with each stage separating as it runs out of propellant. Orion will then dock with the lander there, and two astronauts will descend to the Moon’s south pole. NASA says this orbit allows faster returns to Orion, reduces the lander’s propellant needs and makes the most of SLS’s performance.

Who lands first? Still undecided

Neither company has been assigned the first crewed landing. NASA says it will pick based on lander readiness, with a second landing opportunity to follow. Both companies must first fly an uncrewed demonstration of their crewed lander, and both have added extra milestones: SpaceX will run two demonstrations of its “Cabin 1” crew cabin, and Blue Origin has added human-in-the-loop testing.

Before any of that, Artemis III will fly next summer as a two-week mission confined to Earth orbit, with three NASA astronauts and one Italian astronaut in Orion practising docking with test versions of both landers. Isaacman said Artemis IV, the first crewed landing since Apollo, remains scheduled for 2028, and AP reports NASA will keep its options open as long as possible before choosing the Artemis IV lander.

What astronauts will do on the surface

NASA is targeting two Moonwalks of roughly two hours each during the first surface missions, with astronauts collecting samples and testing the capabilities of the spacesuit provided by Axiom Space. AP reports that, to speed things up and reduce risk, the first moonwalkers will wear a lighter, less complex “sortie suit” than the one Axiom is still developing for longer, later excursions. Axiom will test the sortie suits on the International Space Station next year.

The bottom line

NASA’s message is simple: speed matters. By dropping the halo orbit and letting each lander use its own approach, the agency hopes to cut fuel needs, simplify missions and keep a 2028 landing within reach. Whether Starship or Blue Moon gets there first will depend on which one proves ready, and that race is now well and truly on.

Image: Artist’s Concepts Depict SpaceX’s Starship HLS Test Article for NASA’s Artemis III by NASA/SpaceX via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain Mark 1.0