Artemis III: Paving the Way to Lunar Landings
NASA Science ·
NASA Human Landing System engineers discuss the Artemis III lunar lander test articles and docking operations that will pave the way for future crewed Moon landings. Episode 443 The post Artemis III: Paving the Way to Lunar Landings appeared first on NASA Science .
From Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA each week on the official podcast of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible.
On episode 443, NASA Human Landing System engineers discuss the Artemis III lunar lander test articles and docking operations that will pave the way for future crewed Moon landings. This episode was recorded on August 10, 2026.
Transcript
Joseph Zakrzewski
Houston We Have a Podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center. This is episode 443: Artemis III Paving the Way to Lunar Landings. I’m Joseph Zakrzewski, and I’ll be your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, astronauts, and more, all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight.
Before Artemis astronauts land on the moon’s surface, NASA will conduct the Artemis III mission, allowing teams on Earth and in orbit to practice rendezvous and docking operations between commercial human landing systems and the Orion spacecraft. Information gathered from this mission will support astronaut safety and mission success for crewed lunar landings.
NASA is working with two American companies to develop the Human Landing System that will safely transport astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon’s surface and back for future Artemis missions. For Artemis III, commercial partners will fly test versions known as test articles of the crewed landers that will be used for future moon landings. The lander test articles will be launched by commercial rockets, while the Artemis III crew will launch to low Earth orbit in Orion, atop the agency’s SLS or Space Launch System rocket.
This episode will be your guide to understanding the Artemis III lander test, and we are talking with Kent Criswell, HLS lead systems engineer for Blue Origin, and Reid Ruggles, HLS lead system engineer for SpaceX, on how these spacecraft are being developed and how NASA and its partners are preparing for the next giant leap.
Let’s get started.
We’d like to welcome our guests, Kent and Reid, and gentlemen. I’d love to learn your origin story, how you arrived at NASA, what expertise you have brought, and ultimately what has guided you to work at HLS and with these commercial companies, and Kent, I will start with you. I’d love to learn more about your background and ultimately how you’ve ended up here to support all these wonderful things that NASA and its partners are building up to.
Kent Criswell
Sure, everybody has their own special route in getting to NASA. Mine was fairly unique. I actually graduated mechanical engineering, University of Alabama, and went to work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. So that’s a fairly unique start to my career. So, so started there in D.C. and I was actually there when Katrina hit the you know New Orleans, and we have the huge Michoud assembly facility down New Orleans where we assemble SLS, and at the time it was the external tanks for the shuttle. And so Marshall Space Flight Center, which runs Michoud, they called my program, and I was the program manager, and so I was down there eating MREs and sleeping on a blow-up mattress down at Michoud as we were getting ready to do the repairs for Michoud. And I just made a comment one day, “Yeah, I love working for the Corps, but I maybe intelligence or NASA. It’d be the only people I left for.” Never thought that it would happen. That I’d always been a space geek, and sure enough, opportunity came up, and I moved over to NASA. Started working at Marshall Space Flight Center, then started working with SLS. I was the subsystem intertank manager, and then worked for Exploration Upper Stage. Then did a time up at Glenn, and then moved over to HLS right around COVID time. So I’ve been been there since then, but it’s been a great ride. Love it. So that’s how I got to where I am.
Joseph Zakrzewski
That’s absolutely thrilling, Reid. I’d love to learn more about your origin story and how you arrived at NASA.
Reid Ruggles
Yeah, absolutely. Ever since I was a kid, I don’t know, I can’t pinpoint, you know, what exactly drove it. But but sometime around second grade, I was like, you know what, I want to be a rocket scientist one day. Like, and I’ve got a picture of me dressed up as Neil Armstrong on like Famous American Day, and it was like I want to be a rocket scientist. That’s what it said, and so I just the space bug bit me and never let go. And so I ended up also going to the University of Alabama down in Tuscaloosa. Had a great time down there. And got an aerospace engineering degree, and then. As I was going through my studies my junior year, I was looking for internships, and we have an event called Space Days down there where we have companies from Huntsville and all over the country come, and and it’s all space themed. And you know, I got a I was starting to to chat with someone who worked for Jacobs at the time, which is our support service contractor here at Marshall, and she basically said, “Hey, you should, you know, apply for an internship this summer.” And I was desperate, so I was like, “Yes, absolutely.” You know, I think I applied for probably hundreds of internships, and I think I got one call back, which is the one I took, of course. So I came up here, interned for a summer in the propulsion department, working on mostly on SLS, actually. Went back to school, finished my degree, and they ended up hiring me that next year.
Also, back into the propulsion department, doing main propulsion systems, but this time working for Commercial Crew, which had you know not launched at that time. We were still in development, you know, still trying to get through certification, and so I primarily focused on Falcon Nine and Atlas Five at that time, so working with with SpaceX and ULA. Worked for CCP, became a civil servant during that time as well, but really really focused on that. I had the opportunity after a year or two, I detailed about half time as the deputy lead engineer for Falcon 9, so working with our our lead engineer, who’s kind of like a lead systems engineer in LSE, figuring out you know how do we go you know fly this vehicle? How do we certify reused boosters for Falcon 9, which was a huge deal and and really a hard problem to go solve. Ended up flying or working on Demo-2 through Crew-6, I think, and then about the Crew-6 time timeframe, came over to HLS as the propulsion discipline lead engineer, so leading our our propulsion team for the program, focusing on Blue and SpaceX at the time. So that’s you know engines, main propulsion systems, pneumatics, RCS, supervis, tanks. It’s a bunch of a bunch of stuff that all happens to be very very high risk, unfortunately. But had a great time with that, and then had the opportunity to step into this role as the SpaceX LSE, and and kind of jumped at it.
So it’s been a it’s been a bit of a circuitous path. I’ve kind of always liked the prop side of things, and so this was about the only thing that would have taken me away from from that. But it’s been really fun. HLS has been an incredible program to be on, to learn from. I think the scope of it is really exciting, and that really excited me, of like, you know, we’re going even further and building these these transportation capabilities. But yeah, it’s been you know it’s been a dream of mine since I was a kid to to work at NASA to do human exploration, deep space exploration. So it’s it’s really a a dream come true in a lot of ways, and I’m having fun about every day.
Joseph Zakrzewski
Now let’s set the stage for what these flights look like, and today we’re going to be talking about two lunar lander designs, one from Blue Origin and one from SpaceX and Kent, let’s start with you on the Blue Origin side. Can you give us a a good descriptor of what we’re looking at and what our listeners and viewers will be seeing when they see this lunar lander roll out and be prepared?
Kent Criswell
Sure! So Blue Origin they call their lander the Blue Moon. We typically refer to it as the Mark 2. That’s a distinguisher between their Mark 1, which is the robotic version of their lander, but the Mark 2 is the one for the crew. So it is a payload. It will be on their New Glenn launch vehicle. So, which means it’ll be encapsulated in their faring, and it’ll be deployed in orbit, so it has the crew module. It has the landing legs, the engines, and Blue has chosen to go with hydrogen as their main fuel, and oxygen, of course, liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen. And so this this lander is about 16 meters tall. So if you wanted to compare that to the Apollo LEM, which is seven meters tall, and I guess I could give you the the feet as well. So that’s 52 feet tall for the Mark 2, whereas the LEM is 20, about 23 feet tall. So it’s it’s a little more than double the size. But that is the the Blue Moon.
Joseph Zakrzewski
Thank you, Kent. It’ll be fascinating to see it and see it in person when it’s completely constructed, and you see kind of the vast scale, especially when you compare it to, as you mentioned, the Apollo LEM, which I think so many of us have seen in museums, and so many of us have seen photos of and archival footage. And now going over to read the SpaceX portion of it, what can you tell us about those distinctive characteristics and what we might see from the SpaceX side.
Reid Ruggles
Yeah, the the SpaceX Starship lander. So it’s it’s a little bit bigger than Mark 2, and a little bit bigger than the LEM. So so the Starship HLS or Starship Lander sits about 170 feet tall. It’s about 30 feet wide. So this thing’s pretty massive. So if you- it’s about half the wingspan of the ISS in length. It’s about a 14-story building, or I think in terms of football, sometimes, so if you put the end of the lander at a field goal, so at the back of the end zone, the nose of the lander would sit at about the 46-yard line. So we’re talking about a pretty massive vehicle that’s got a lot of capabilities.
It’s a derivative of SpaceX’s V3 upper stage Starship of their super heavy Starship launch vehicle. And so one of the big differences, whereas with Mark 2, it’s going to be a payload on New Glenn, the Starship HLS lander is actually the second stage of the launch vehicle. So it it rides on top of the super heavy booster until you get to main engine cutoff, and then stage sep, and then it’ll actually power itself to orbit, and then go and do the the HLS mission.
So it’s the crew cabin which sits on the top of the vehicle. You’ve got kind of these bay, multi bay windows that look out over space or the lunar surface. It’s about 22,000 cubic feet of interior volume, which is about half of the interior volume of the entire ISS. So there’s a lot of room for the crew to conduct experiments, to live and work, and eventually, you know, be on the lunar surface for multiple days at a time. So it’s it’s a really exciting vehicle from that respect. Because the crew cabin is up at the top of the vehicle, there’s actually an elevator below the crew cabin in the what they call the garage area, where there’s there’s two airlocks where the crew will get suited up and then come out to the elevator, ride the elevator down to the lunar surface, conduct their experiments and EVAs, and then come back. The lander is based on SpaceX’s liquid oxygen liquid methane propulsion architecture, so it’s using the same Raptors that they’re currently using for the V3 vehicle. So we’re getting a lot of learnings from their their near term test flights and their near term experiments.
Joseph Zakrzewski
Well, and you touched upon something that I was just naturally curious about, because I know a lot of listeners and a lot of us here at NASA we follow along with a lot of these test flights that we see that SpaceX does with their Starship are there a lot of similarities from those test places test flights that carry over or is it something different on on a different scale?
Reid Ruggles
Yeah, so the Starship HLS lander is a derivative of the V3 vehicle, so it’s the V3 upper stage is the foundational architecture for the the HLS vehicles down the line, which includes lander, tanker, depot. So there’s a lot of similarities, but there are a lot of unique aspects. So like I mentioned, the crew cabin, docking adapters, some of the unique landing things you need for landing on the moon, like landing legs and some insulation and paint and things like that. The elevator, the garage. So there, there are a lot of commonalities. So you know the way SpaceX operates is this iterative, you know, test, fly, fix kind of philosophy, and so we’re learning a lot about how these vehicles operate. Obviously, the propulsion architecture is somewhat similar, but you also think about things like software and mission systems and GNC, and so we’re learning how all these things are operating. We’re testing early versions, prototypes of them, so that when we do get to the lander vehicle down the road, we’re just going to be more reliable, more successful. We have a better idea of how it operates for HLS and for our crew to make sure that we can transport them safely to the surface and back.
Joseph Zakrzewski
And with these two, with Blue Origin and SpaceX, and doing some reading, and of course, for those listening, you know, can definitely find out more about HLS on NASA.gov. But when it comes to an approach of a test article, how do these test articles that we’re preparing for, for namely Artemis III, differ from what we might see for a crewed landing?
Reid Ruggles
Yeah. So a tester article is you know something where you’re putting up a prototype. You know, it’s not the full lander. Typically, you’re going to be looking at what are my riskiest systems or components or operations that I want to go try to learn about, or even just what is my you know, minimum viable product that I can get up into space, get it in a real environment, and actually go get some data so that I can validate my models, and then I can build a better lander down the road. That’s really the purpose of a test article. It is to to test everything you can before you get to the real thing.
So for SpaceX, the the Artemis III test article is again going to be a much closer derivative of their current V3 vehicle, so that’s one they they currently have flying. They basically came to us and said, “Hey, we can do this mission. You know, we’re going to use what we have right now, and we’re going to modify it so that we can do docking, prox ops, stack control for the Artemis III vehicle with Orion and the crew.” So it’s going to look a lot like what you see now for the V3 test flights that have been ongoing. We’re going to add a docking adapter and a nose cone on the top of it so that we can actually interface with Orion. Also, make sure that we have things like proximity communication capabilities, mission systems capabilities, and then once they’re docked, the Starship vehicle will do the combined stack control with Orion. Orion will then undock and then come home.
Joseph Zakrzewski
And with that, from the SpaceX perspective too, of of what that might be, but the same thing goes for Blue. Is is what might differentiate from from their lander during this test, and and what do you hope to accomplish, or what do you hope to test out during this test?
Kent Criswell
So for Blue, their test vehicle, it’s we’re calling it the Mark 2-D, which is the development version, is going to be virtually the same crew module, lander crew module, and then they’re going to have structure above that for radiators and solar panels and their thrusters. So they’re not going to fly a BE-7, which is their lunar lander engine. So they’re they’re not going to need that because they’re going to use their RCS system to hold stack control for them to be the target to dock with Orion. So that vehicle is going to be very similar in size, and that will help Orion as it approaches the Mark 2, because the Orion will be the chaser, and so differing from Starship, which will control the Orion lander stack, for Blue Origin, Orion will control that stack control. So when they dock, and and Mark 2 will be the target, and they’re using their thrusters to hold that attitude and do orbital maneuvers, then Orion will dock, and again proving out a lot of that comm and the docking. So Blue has their own docking, Blue docking system that they’ll use as the passive side, and Orion has the active side. So they’ll prove that out, and then for one of the flight test objectives for this test demonstration, they will actually, the crew will actually go into that crew module and test out their ECLS system. And so, with their test article, if you will, it will test out a lot of those systems that need to be proven out to reduce risk, to assure we have that verification and everything’s functional from the software perspective, so it’ll be an excellent test. And doing that in low Earth orbit will be a great way to prove out that technology.
Joseph Zakrzewski
With the different profiles and the different test articles being so different, and you know mentioning that you know with with with Blue Moon that Orion would dock to the side, with Starship that Orion would dock to the top. You mentioned also a lot of great capabilities that are going to be tested out, and and key tests that need to happen. Whether it’s the communications, it’s the docking, it’s the ECLS system that you brought up. Just from your background and your perspectives, and just your history in working with you know either these companies or just your time here at NASA, are there moments or tests that you in particular are excited to see or curious to see perform and and see what the results may may be.
Reid Ruggles
Yeah, it’s it’s a it’s a stressing mission profile. It’s it’s a really complex mission, even though this is coming before the landing missions, which of course are going to be in some ways more complex, more risky. Having to integrate Orion, SLS, New Glenn, Mark 2, Super Heavy, and Starship together in a coordinated launch campaign, figuring out okay, you know they’re going to launch first, then we’re going to wait, then we’re going to do this and do that. In some ways, it’s it’s harder than the landing campaign, because the landing campaigns will be with just one lander vehicle or the other. And so having to figure out the mission systems, like you talked about, just trying to get the weather right, right, and and and hope we launch into into sunny skies, right? That that is a a huge part of it.
Part of that that that comes to me, is is what I would call the people systems side of it. So I think people are very familiar, you know, we see the hardware. You know, I’m a I’m a prop guy at heart, and so you see the engines and the smoke and fire, and everyone gets really excited, and and that is really fun and also very dangerous, and and that’s the part I really like. But I think what gets missed a lot of times is the the people that are behind all these things also need to practice. They need to figure out how to do things, and and sometimes you really can’t figure out how to do something until you go do a test. So just like we have test articles for the actual hardware that’s going to fly in space, we are putting people into real situations with real stakes with real hardware in actual low Earth orbit, to figure out okay, how do we deal with anomalies? How do we deal with inter vehicle communication?
You know, we have you know ISS has been flying for 25 years, right? Something along those lines, it’s been continuously crewed, and so we’ve learned a ton from ISS. We’ve learned a ton from Artemis II. We have lessons learned from Shuttle and Apollo and all these these missions. But what we’re trying to do with HLS and what we’re trying to do with Orion and SLS is fundamentally different, and that’s something we got to go figure out as an agency, as a nation, as industry, how we can do these coordinated campaigns successfully, safely, and accomplish all of our objectives, and that-that’s the part I’m really excited about-is to see how our people across NASA, Blue, and SpaceX step up and accomplish this mission. What they learn, and then how we’re able to turn around and use those lessons directly for the next missions, and then all the missions after that. Because it’s not just one, right? We’re we’re going to stay. We’re going to build a moon base. We’re going to stay there for a long time hopefully, on the lunar surface. And all the lessons we learn here, I think, are going to impact everything we do down the road.
Joseph Zakrzewski
And you shared some great insight of what I think a lot of people are going to be looking at is is this mission profile and this and this coordinated, you know, closely timed event. And and that’s kind of one of the things I wanted to talk to you gentlemen about was just the overall launch cadence. I think when you see the actual visuals of what it’s going to take to accomplish a mission like Artemis III with SLS and Orion and the crew itself, then you have the the Blue Origin components, the SpaceX components, just the sheer cadence of seeing three different rockets carrying three different pieces of of hardware that all will serve you know its purpose in this very tightly choreographed dance. Can you kind of share us you know zooming out a little bit of of what those launch vehicles that will be a part of this mission will do and help carry out this mission to get everyone off the ground? I know you mentioned that you’re a smoke and fire engines guy, but there’s a lot of intricacies when it comes to the timing of it, as well as just the sheer hardware and and force needed to accomplish a mission like this, from getting off the ground into low Earth orbit.
Kent Criswell
Yeah. So for for Blue Origin, we call that their 7×2, meaning the first stage of New Glenn is seven BE-4s, and the second stage has two BE-3U’s. But that is the vehicle they’re going to use for this test flight, is the 7×2, and that will launch the Mark 2 demonstration test article. And so once they launch, they will go into orbit, and they’ll do a checkout. So we want to make sure the landers healthy before we launch crew. Adding the crew capabilities, even for a launch is is critical to make sure we’re ready. And so they have a loiter capability, meaning that they can launch and wait for SLS to launch the crew. So once that’s checked out, they’ll launch the crew, and they’ll go up into LEO to start start the dance and start to dock with them.
They’ll test out again a lot of their ECLS systems and the comms to make sure that we’re working well together. Of course, there’s a lot of ground testing, so this is not necessarily the first time they’re doing. They’re going to do sims on the ground, but as Reid said, you know, doing it for real is a whole nother ball game. And that’s where- you know it’s- I envision a gear and the teeth of the gear, and so when you have something go wrong, a contingency, you you hope you’ve addressed those. And just because a teeth breaks off in the gear doesn’t mean the the gear won’t still work. And so you want to make sure you’ve covered all those contingency operations to make sure the mission still goes off, and you’re able to respond to that. But but of course we we plan for the nominal, and then we also rehearse contingency operations. But with this test flight for Blue, getting into the crew module, testing out their environmental control systems is going to be a key part in docking. So it will be super exciting once this happens.
Reid Ruggles
Yeah. So once Orion is is finished with the Blue portion of the mission, they’ll undock the Blue lander. Will will go off. Orion will then phase to where the Starship vehicle is, which will launch after the the Blue portion of the mission is done. They’ll then, like Kent mentioned, Orion for all these is the chaser vehicle. So it’s the one actively maneuvering to come into both of the test articles, and that’s also just like it’ll be for future missions. And so simulating what we’ll have for Artemis IV or V and plus. So they’ll come in, do a docking maneuver with the Starship vehicle. They’ll dock, get hard dock captured. Starship will then control the stack attitude, which again is going to be very similar to what it’s going to be in future missions. They’ll accomplish other test objectives at that time, and then Orion will undock, come home, and both both vehicles will will come back home. So I think it’s a it’s a really exciting visual to think about. And and honestly, I’m kind of jealous for the crew in some ways, you know, they’re going to get to dock with two different spacecraft in one mission, which I I don’t know if we’ve actually done that before. Now that I think about it, I don’t know if anyone’s ever actually been able to do that. I’m trying to think of shuttle. I don’t think Apollo did. So for the crew side of things, like having the opportunity to say, hey, you know, I’ve taken Orion, we’ve taken it for a test flight around the Moon. We know how this thing handles, and now we’re going to go dock with these two completely different spacecraft, completely different size of vehicles…
Kent Criswell
In the same mission.
Reid Ruggles
In the same mission, yeah. I mean, days potentially after each other. That that’s that’s really cool to me-
Kent Criswell
Very unique.
Reid Ruggles
-and I think the you know beyond the data and everything, which which of course we’re very excited about the the inspirational aspect I think can’t be understated either. You know the visuals of seeing our Orion crewed spacecraft and the crew, you know, looking out the windows to see the Blue Moon test article, but then also looking out the windows to see Starship and some of the external imagery we’re going to get I think is is super exciting.
Joseph Zakrzewski
And it all comes down to timing at some points too. And how does this timing? You know, we’ve talked about, you know, the the launch and who’s going to launch first, second, and third, and and how that breaks down. But you know, even looking at just past and current history for whether it be you know a launch to get crew to the International Space Station or cargo to the International Space Station or even Artemis II, like timing that launch to make sure the Moon is in the right place, so they have that free return trajectory to come back home and be able to, you know, hit the Moon at the exact right point at the exact right time, so they can accomplish their mission. What does the timing look like, and how is that influencing mission design? Because you know we’ve talked about how carefully choreographed this has to be, but I mean you’re talking about minutes and seconds that that have to be executed right on the dot in order to accomplish this, so I’d love to know how just when when you’re looking at these different test articles and when you’re looking at the mission profile, how much timing plays a role?
Reid Ruggles
Yeah, timing is, timing is everything. The the nice thing about this mission that’s different than the later lunar missions is that since we’re doing it in low Earth orbit, we have more opportunities, more launch opportunities, which will free up some resources on the ground to to get those launch vehicles in the air. We also are setting up the orbits to have repeating ground tracks, and so we should have multiple opportunities to to actually launch. They may still be instantaneous launch windows. Some of that depends on the launch vehicle capability, but that’s also a nice part of this mission is that we can test those launch campaigns, so that even though it will be still pretty difficult to get everything to line up at the right time, it’s not quite as difficult as what we’re going to have to do for the the lunar missions. Where I know, like for SLS and Orion and Artemis II, you might have had a couple of opportunities a month, and then you got to wait to the next month. And we’re going to have that, and we’re going to face that challenge down the road. But this mission is a great test of those those capabilities.
Joseph Zakrzewski
And looking ahead, how will having a regular cadence of human landing missions shape NASA’s long-term plans for Artemis and sustainable lunar access? You know, you you talked about we’re here to stay, but certainly as you build up this cadence and build up more lessons and more tests, certainly the expertise will follow, and everything will become more and more fine-tuned. But when you look ahead at not just Artemis III, but everything moving forward, especially when it comes to HLS, how will that impact those future goals and those those ultimate destinations that we want to accomplish and goals we want to accomplish.
Kent Criswell
So, Artemis III is going to build confidence again. Working with the multiple launch vehicles and getting that launch availability understood. And when the launch availability drops significantly going to the moon, and so hitting those launch windows, as Reid pointed out, is critical. It’s it’s not you know like going to Mars where you really got to wait for the planets to align before you have that trajectory. But there’s so many different factors for the Moon. You have comm on the south pole that you have to be concerned about. You had sunlight for these early missions that you really want a lot of sunlight for power generation. So you have a lot of different aspects that limit when you can go to the Moon. And so with this Artemis III launch window, as Reid pointed out, we’re going to have more opportunities, but still you build that confidence to work together with all the ground infrastructure at Kennedy, and getting that proven out. So that will build more capabilities in the future as we we push farther.
Reid Ruggles
Yeah, and I think going back to kind of what I talked about earlier with the people systems, when you have a cadence, you’re you’re exercising those people systems along with the hardware and the ground systems, you know, repeatedly. So you’re kind of developing a muscle memory for how to go do these things. You know, you think about Apollo and the success that Apollo had was really built on what they did first in Mercury, and then in Gemini, and then they went to Apollo, and so you had this kind of gradual, fast but gradual buildup of okay, we’re going to do suborbital flights, and then we’re going to do really simple orbital flights, and now we’re going to do two crew and docking, and you had the Agena target vehicle, and you’re building up all these capabilities for the hardware, but the people are coming along with that as well. So you had a lot of the same people who you know cut their teeth on Mercury, then working Gemini, and then when they came to Apollo, they were like, “Yeah, I know how to do human spaceflight. Like we’re gonna we’re gonna go do this.” And after Apollo, you know, our focus kind of shifted to the shuttle and station, which was great, and we’ve learned an incredible amount from all of those. But we haven’t had to do these deep space missions in a long time.
Kent Criswell
Yeah. So just because your grandfather, great father did something, doesn’t mean exactly you got it. And so yeah, now we need to make sure we have the workforce. Yeah. And just because one company did it doesn’t mean everybody can do it.
Reid Ruggles
And bringing everyone along with the ride is is a is a huge part of that. Something I’ve kind of thought about. I was thinking about as I’ve gone further in my career. You know, every everything you see is like a world in and of itself. So, you know, you think about okay, yeah, mission systems and planning, and you know, like red lines and ops controls and all this kind of stuff that like our ops community does, which is at Johnson, that is like you know tons of people spending you know their entire careers honing how do we do flight ops and how do we you know do capsule communication and all this kind of stuff that you know, we’ve then got to go apply these to this new mission with these new architectures and bring those capabilities up to the level where you know once we get it going for Artemis III and then Artemis IV, we’ve got the hardware, we’ve got the software, we’ve got the people, and now we can execute those repeatable missions and and build up more and more capability to eventually achieve incredible things. I think on the lunar surface, and and hopefully we never lose those capabilities again, and we just keep pushing further and further. I’m really excited to to see that build up, and then have all of that capability that we can go deploy and go accomplish the goals that that we want to accomplish.
Joseph Zakrzewski
And now that takes me into another element that we’ve touched upon a couple different times is is the docking operations, and that’s something that I know. And just hearing from your voice and your tone of voice, something that you’re really looking forward to. And you even mentioned, you know, when was the last time a spacecraft docked with two different spacecraft from two different companies or anything of that nature? I would love to learn more about that, and I kind of teased it a little bit earlier about you know Blue Origin has a different docking style and where on the spacecraft you dock, and then same thing for SpaceX. So I’d love to learn from from from you two gentlemen, and Kent, maybe we’ll start with you. What are some of the biggest engineering challenges involved in making those operations happen?
Kent Criswell
So for for Mark 2 again, their Blue is building a very similar size and shape vehicle, and so under understanding how Orion visualizes the lander, you know, if if you’re in the dark area, you know, if you’re in the shadow of Earth, you’ve got to be able to see still as you start approaching what we call RPOD, Rendezvous Prox Ops and Docking. So you want to make sure that those those two vehicles can start communicating. There’s different phases of RPOD as you get closer and closer. You shift the different type of comms system, so you’re also proving out your reaction control system and making sure that you can stay at the right attitude and hold, you know, like Interstellar , the movie where they were docking at a very high high rate, and you rip apart the docking system. Of course, we don’t want that, so we want to make sure we’re proving out that we’re controlling the the right forces and inertial areas for that docking. So it’s a it’s a great test. And some things you just can’t do on Earth, where where you can test a lot and build confidence on the ground. When you’re in space, things are different. You know, we we have our mindset, or just our our experiences with gravity. So your properties of the liquids react differently. So when you’re in space and you’re at zero g, it’s it’s a different engineering challenge. And so again, taking those steps to improve is is going to help us, and so that that’ll be part of that docking test out to prove out all those type technologies.
Reid Ruggles
Yeah, and I’d say a lot of the same thoughts and lessons also also apply for the the Starship vehicle. So you’re you know the difference here is we’ve got our docking adapter on the nose, which is again very similar to what the lander is going to be. So you’re going to be able to test that out. You know, just having Orion get in the right place and then try to acquire the targets with their lidar and visual systems and things like that. That changes depending on what your test article looks like and what the lander looks like. So, you know, if you have, in our example, shiny stainless steel behind the docking adapter, right? That might look different than if you have something that’s painted with like AZ-93, which is one of the really common space paints that’s white that you see everywhere. So, so getting those, actually being able to acquire the target, get in close, use your reaction control system, even just seeing how Orion’s thrusters impinge on the test articles and how they respond to that is going to be something that you really you don’t get that on Earth because we typically don’t have a spacecraft operating on the ground with its thrusters firing next to another one.
So, like Kent said, you know, there’s only so much you can do on the ground. You’ve really got to go and do the test for real with real stakes in orbit, and also with with real people. You know, there’s going to be people behind the controls of Orion and responding to how the test articles are- hopefully, not moving very much, which is part of the the test objectives and then actually getting those two docking systems in place. I do think you know based on our ISS heritage, you know we kind of know generally how to do docking. But again, having them in space, getting space effects in there, how vacuum affects it, the temperature differential. You know, as you’re swinging around the Earth, you’re going from you know blindingly hot sunlight to freezing cold darkness within 45 minutes, that changes things. Metals expand and contract. You know your hooks will change. Your mechanisms will will change slightly. And we’re, I think we’re pretty confident that it’s all going to work. But like I said before, there’s nothing like flight. There’s nothing like test.
Joseph Zakrzewski
You dove right into my next thought, and you were you know you were talking about the paint used and now you’re talking about you know the differences of maybe what you might experience in low Earth orbit versus in deep space and heading towards the Moon is you know in in terms of being in shadow and sunlight and every 90 minutes you see a sunrise sunset when when orbiting around the Earth. How does that affect this test when it comes to docking operations and and overall, just performance when you’re working in LEO versus future missions where you’re heading further out and out towards the moon, and you might and you don’t have that every 90 minute cadence of of temperature fluctuations and the like.
Reid Ruggles
Right. It’s it’s pretty different. You know, you’re you’re still in space, but and I think something that that people might not realize is how hot LEO is, low Earth orbit. You know, it’s not just the sun, which is you know between here and the Moon, the sun’s influence or your what’s called heat flux, which is your your your power per area of the heat that’s impinging on your spacecraft. The sun’s influence is not that much different between between the Moon and the Earth, but when you get close to the Earth, you have Earth shine. Basically, you have your albedo from the Earth that’s bouncing reflected solar from the Earth through the atmosphere to the ground, back back up at you. It is actually a very significant contributor to heating during the mission, and the Moon has something similar, but it’s not quite as reflective as the Earth. And so that’s one of the challenges we’re having to face, particularly with Orion in this mission design. Is you know Orion is designed as a deep space spacecraft. It is meant to go to the Moon. You know, hopefully take us even further than that. And the thermal loads that are on the spacecraft in our test articles are fundamentally very different than the Moon. And so having to design the mission around well, how long can we spend in this orbit, you know, before the heat is too much. How do we, you know, how does the TCS, the thermal control system, react to these temperatures? You know, can you make sure the crew stays comfortable inside the capsule? It’s a huge part of it. You know, and like I mentioned before, the temperature swings of if you’re not controlling your your attitude super closely, you know, if you’re pointing your docking system at the sun, and then all of a sudden you go behind the Earth, you’re going to go from hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit to, you know, 100 degrees Fahrenheit, maybe maybe 50 degrees, maybe even negative, and so the you know all of your systems will react to that in different ways. And as you go through the mission design and the hardware design, those are all things we know and can predict. But those are unique challenges that we got to go design for, plan for, and think about for this for this mission.
Kent Criswell
Yeah, and also tagging onto the thermal aspect, you know, Orion wants to be a certain orientation. They want to be tail to sun all the time, so that’s a different impact to Blue because they’re docking on the side. And of course, for the lunar mission Mark 2, you’re going to be broad facing with hydrogen. Again, hydrogen is much less dense, much colder, so you have boil-off concerns that you need to consider, and so it’s sized accordingly. But there are different impacts. So for the Artemis III mission, just like that, like Reid was saying, with the albedo from Earth and being more cyclical, you’re going to have different impacts there. And rejection of heat typically takes more power, so you need, you know more solar. So those impacts will be tested out as well as we go go to the Moon. Again, with the Moon, you you’re going to have even more prop because you’re going to be your lunar orbital insertion LOI is going to change your orbit to go around the poles. So we avoid some of that heat at the equator, where the the Moon’s gaining heat over two weeks. You know it’s got a much longer orbit. So we, all those are taken into effect for these mission profiles. But this Artemis III test flight is going to be a very good proof of concept and design as they they work those thermal systems.
Joseph Zakrzewski
And looking at the overall mission and just preparations for for HLS and everything moving forward. You mentioned you know a few different times and making references back to Apollo and to Gemini and to Mercury. NASA has a lot of history, but when it comes to products like this and with NASA having one key component to it, Blue, of course, having another, and SpaceX another. How is NASA either learning, or using those lessons learned and using their experience to really help these HLS providers be successful. Because you touched upon some of the the test flights and other events that have happened with each partner, but with that wealth of knowledge, what’s NASA’s role in helping shape these companies to to best learn and understand and use some of those best practices?
Kent Criswell
Oh, we are definitely helping out. So within our HLS contracts, we allow for what we call collaborations. So Blue or SpaceX, they can request certain expertise, and so we use that prior knowledge of vehicles and missions to support our providers. Now the providers still have the responsibility for the design. This is their design, and so we provide analysis, and they’ll take it and make sure that it fits in their design. But there’s a lot of that collaboration in certain areas that they request. We also have government task agreements where they will want to use our facilities- so you know Johnson, Ames, Glenn, Goddard, Marshall, all all the centers can provide those facilities, so they don’t have to spend money building up a lot of facilities.
Now with new space, of course, SpaceX and Blue want to control their destiny as much as possible. That’s just the new space economy where you vertically integrate as much as possible. But there are some things that just don’t have the return on investment to build a whole new facility, and so NASA has that history, has that knowledge, has those facilities, and so in certain areas, we’ll do some testing with them for them, and they’ll be right along. So NASA is definitely helping out in proving and maturing these designs and concepts further.
Reid Ruggles
Yeah, the the collaborations are a great example of that. I think it’s it’s up to like 80-some odd EP, which is like a full person per-year per-provider. So you’ve got you know equivalent of like 160 super smart NASA engineers who are available, you know at times for a whole year or longer to go and help solve problems or provide lessons learned or things like that. You know there’s a there’s a ton of collabs out there that have been stood up. I think some of the examples are like doing advanced thermal analysis of these cryogenic propulsion systems. So using things like thermal desktop or CFD to actually figure out what what are the boil-off rates going to look like. How does conduction and and radiation impact these things? You know, even things like landing site selection, so using our expertise of imaging the Moon, studying the lunar environment, you know, we’ve written standards for defining like lunar regolith and crater distribution and all these things, and then we can basically take those people who are who’ve been doing this their whole lives, basically, and go and let them work effectively in line with the provider and share those lessons and say, “Hey, I know how to do this. Let’s go talk about how your system, you know, should use these things specifically. So I think, yeah, that and the testing side of things is is really helpful.
And some of the things that you know, again, I’m I’m a I’m a prop guy at heart, so there’s a lot of lessons learned that have been written into NASA standards that have come about in the last like 20 years that basically define like, “Hey you know we’re NASA we’ve been doing you know propulsion systems for 60 years now right I think we’ve learned maybe more than a few things, you know, some some bad, some good, some the hard way, some the easy way. Let’s go write these down into publicly available standards that we can then give to not just our HLS providers, but also to things like Commercial Crew, Comm LEO, Space Act agreements, like any company out there that wants to go and and learn how to do these things, we can say, hey, this is a compendium of you know NASA’s knowledge for the past 60 years. You know, if you have questions, we can of course answer them. But like this is this is the best practices, right?” And I think that that’s another way that we’re helping industry and these providers specifically to make sure that we’re taking all those lessons learned because we didn’t have those standards at Apollo because they were making it up. Basically, they were figuring it out in real time, and you know, then we you know now that we’ve gotten into the 2000s, 2010s, we’ve now been able to write those and and get them out to industry for for use.
Kent Criswell
And they get to use their own standards. So Blue and SpaceX have their own standards. In some cases, they don’t use ours, but it has to meet the intent. So we work with them to make sure that their standard they’re working to meets our-
Reid Ruggles
Exactly.
Kent Criswell
-DNC standards, design and construction standards that we’ve set over these decades. So it’s a it’s a very good symbiotic relationship.
Reid Ruggles
Absolutely.
Joseph Zakrzewski
Well, it’s great to hear that collaboration too, and and and I’ve heard it time and time again. No matter what program or what mission, you know, it’s the ultimate team sport, and for everybody to be on the same page has to be the biggest key too. And and with that NASA history and that collaboration, it sounds like things are growing, and and and exciting to see not just from the NASA standpoint, but from what these commercial providers can can do, and continuing to to really look ahead, you know, even before Artemis III and with these test articles, when it comes to HLS, what are some upcoming milestones that you and the team are are kind of zeroing in on, whether it be additional tests, or you mentioned you know Blue Moon Mark 1, you know Starship test flights, prop transfer demos, anything that’s on the radar that that we can kind of follow along with here on the ground to kind of see how that progression is made and and seeing a lot of that collaboration and real time execution and action?
Reid Ruggles
Yeah, I think there’s going to be a lot of exciting things coming in the next year plus. I think I think you’re going to see the the pace of items really start to pick up. There’ll probably be more, you know, public events and things like that. But for SpaceX specifically, of course, we’re going to see a lot more test flights. You know, I think SpaceX has stated pretty publicly that their intent is to fly Starship as often and as quickly as possible, which is great for us because we get, you know, we get data from all of that, we’re learning. Of course there’s the the long duration and prop transfer demo missions, which we don’t necessarily need for the Artemis III mission, but absolutely for our lunar missions, those are going to be critical. So those are going to be learning about how does long duration spaceflight affect the Starship vehicles. You know, how do we do and figure out propellant transfer in orbit, which is a huge enabling technology for the Starship architecture. We’re going to be, of course, watching that very, very closely.
Kent Criswell
Yeah, and for Blue, one of the big missions that we’re watching is Mark 1. Again, that’s a CLPS mission under Moon Base. Robotic, where they’re going to land on the south pole of the Moon, and that will prove out a lot of information, such as thermal boil-off. Again, that uses the same liquid hydrogen, so we need to understand and prove-out that for confidence for the Mark 2, they’ll prove out their BE-7 engine. So that’s going to be a great learning mission. Also, as Reid said, they’re building up their ECLS and docking testing.
But one other thing that we are really focused on is the work with Orion. So we have to do a lot of joint testing, prove out the software to make sure we’re communicating. You know, it’s it’s like trying to make sure you got your Apple talking to your Windows computer, right? There’s there’s different systems, and so you want to make sure that they’re they’re flawlessly communicating. So that’s going to be a big effort, and that’s not just you know Blue and SpaceX. That is with us. So there will be a lot of that joint testing. I mean, we you you got to think about the vehicles now are just flying these computers and software code writers aren’t, you know, rocket people, and so you got to test these flight software systems to make sure they’re controlling your vehicle the right way. So a lot of software testing to prove out the controls and to get ready for that joint work.
Joseph Zakrzewski
And with so many upcoming milestones leading into Artemis III and moving into low Earth orbit, kind of- Kent, going back to you, I’d love to kind of see where the the complement is, whether from uncrewed demonstration missions that we’ve talked about and some of those milestones that you’ve mentioned, and and Reid similar for you for for SpaceX. How are those uncrewed demonstration missions, these emerging technologies, everything that we can keep an our eye on? How will they influence Artemis III?
Kent Criswell
So the uncrewed demonstration mission is actually going to be after Artemis III. So Artemis III is going to be a single launch of New Glenn, taking the lander into orbit, and then subsequently there’ll be an uncrewed demonstration to the lunar surface. And so Blue has chosen to really exceed our requirements in our contract. They’re going to mimic and match up the conops of the lunar mission for the crew, so they’re going to learn a lot. So as they do Mark 1, as they do this Artemis III demonstration mission, and then they build up for their uncrewed demonstration, they’re going to stay the full duration of the crewed mission, and they’re going to ascend off the surface. So that will be super exciting. To make sure everything is working and functioning properly before we actually put crew, so those build upon each other, and Blue’s got a great plan for that buildup.
Reid Ruggles
Yeah, and and on the SpaceX side, I think for Artemis III particular, the the things that are going to most influence that are these these test flights that are ongoing because they’re using a derivative of the the mainline v3 ship. But I do want to touch on you know uncrewed demo is going to be absolutely the the linchpin that says yeah we can go do this you know we can test you know we we can even simulate you know boil off we can test ECLS, we can test comms, we can test a lot of things in orbit, maybe even around the Moon, things like that. But the real, you know, I would say one of the highest risk areas that we’re we really got to focus on is that actual landing performance. When you’re starting to come into the Moon, you’re starting to get plume surface interaction with the the exhaust from the vehicles actually landing on the lunar surface. You know, I think some of the- I’m trying to think which Apollo mission it was. One of them, where when they actually they landed and they came out, they realized they were landing on a hill, basically. So they were kind of tilted off to the side. You know, the Moon is not a nicely prepared landing pad. It’s got boulders that are you know 10s of feet tall scattered around. You’ve got craters, hills. So uncrewed demo for both providers is going to show, you know, that their systems not only can get to the Moon, but can safely land on the Moon, stay there safely, and actually lift off as well. So that that’s going to be the big one after Artemis III that I would look for to say, yeah, we are we are ready to go. And that’s that’s part of the the mission that we’ve given them. That’s part of the contract. You know, it’s built off what you know CCP did with their contracts to ISS. You know, first you have an uncrewed demo, and then you have a crewed demo. So that that is going to be really exciting. That’s going to test all of our systems, our people, the hardware, the software-you know, all the critical parts that say, “Yeah, let’s let’s go do this. Let’s go actually put put boots back on the Moon.”
Joseph Zakrzewski
I have one more question for you. I know I’ve I’ve come up with probably a list of forty more as we’ve dove into everything that NASA is doing, Blue is doing, and SpaceX is doing. But for you, Reid and Kent, would love to to know more when you envision the future of of HLS and the big picture. And you kind of zoom out maybe a little bit further. You know, not just Artemis III, not just Artemis IV, even, but just the future of HLS. What excites you the most about how these missions and the tests that they will be performing here in the in the very near future will pave the way for astronauts to actually live and work on the surface of the Moon.
Reid Ruggles
Yeah, I think for me it it comes down to capability. You know, the the transportation problem is I would I would say, and maybe I’m biased, is is probably one of the hardest problems we have to solve. So actually, building the systems and the architectures to get you know a massive amount of payload and people from Earth to the lunar orbit and to the surface and back safely. Once we have that capability established, there’s really no no telling where you go from there. I mean, you know, we have incredible scientists and researchers and engineers working on you know now a problem of okay, instead of saying your payload must be you know 300 pounds and fit in this like two cubic foot you know cubic foot box, it’s like well now you have 10,000 pounds and the size of of a bedroom, right? Like, what what could you go do with that?
So I think what’s really exciting to me is that you know HLS is going to form, I think, the backbone of this transportation capability that’s going to allow us to go explore the Moon, you know, learn more about the Earth, you know. I think when Apollo came back with their soil samples and rocks, I think we learned more about Earth maybe than we did about the Moon potentially. So the the scientific discoveries that I think are just over the horizon. Once we can reliably put mass on the surface and bring it back, that capability is something that we’ve never had. You know, Apollo didn’t have that. We obviously haven’t had it recently. You know, what what creative, you know, what what can people come up with that are that are so creative and and smart to exploit that and to use that and then to build off of it for future generations. That’s that’s going to be that that’s really cool for me.
Kent Criswell
100% agree. I think all the assets that we’re going to build up, comm assets. You know, people forget that there’s no GPS on the moon. Where in the heck are you landing? Where am I in space? And as we build up those capabilities, we get more accuracy. We get more assets on the surface. This spinoff for Earth is going to be great. We’re going to learn so much more on battery technology. We’re going to learn so much more for communication bandwidth. You know, a lot of people they want HD. Well, that that HD video that that takes a lot of bandwidth for assets that are very scarce right now, but as we build up those capabilities, we’re going to get amazing footage from the surface of the Moon, and we’ll build up to four astronauts on the surface. As we mentioned, we’re going to have a pressurized rover and a habitat with Moon Base and CLPS building up assets that get there. We’re going to turn the south pole into a laboratory that will prepare humanity for going further into space and explore Mars. So that is what the Moon is for: is a prove out technology of how to live on another planetary body and get humans further. That is what is a game changer for HLS is putting those assets on the surface to make this possible.
Joseph Zakrzewski
As we wrap up today’s conversation, we encourage our listeners to dive deeper into the incredible work happening across NASA as we prepare for the next era of lunar exploration. Human landing systems are just one piece of a much larger effort to return astronauts to the moon, and you can follow the latest mission updates, technology progress, and Artemis planning at NASA.gov.
Kent and Reid, I’m I’m just excited just to even just to talk with you about this and to see everything that’s to come here in the future is is going to be thrilling, and I know it’s going to be so for our listeners as well. Thank you so much for joining us on Houston We Have a Podcast to talk about all this.
Reid Ruggles
Yeah, thank you. It was great to talk to you and share more about this mission. Really appreciate it.
Kent Criswell
This was fun.
Joseph Zakrzewski
Thanks for sticking around. I hope you learned something new today.
Our full collection of episodes and all the wonderful NASA podcasts can be found at nasa.gov/podcasts .
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This interview was recorded on August 10, 2026.
Our producer is Dane Turner. Audio engineers are Will Flato and Daniel Tohill, and our social media is managed by Leah Cheshier Mustachio and Kelcie Howren. Houston We Have a Podcast was created and supervised by Gary Jordan. Special thanks to Corinne Beckinger, Laura Kiker, and Kenna Pell for helping us assemble today’s conversation, and Kent Criswell and Reid Ruggles for joining us today.
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