NASA moon mission in jeopardy after SpaceX Starship engine failure during orbital debut

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) plan to send astronauts back on the Moon by 2028 could be jeopardy after the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX’s Starship suffered an engine failure during its orbital debut.

Though the Starship reached orbit for the first time on Monday, marking a major breakthrough after years of testing, the flight didn't go entirely to plan.

One of the spacecraft's three Raptor engines shut down prematurely, forcing SpaceX to cut what was supposed to be a 10-hour mission to around three hours.

The spacecraft still managed to deploy 26 Starlink satellites, making the flight Starship's first commercial mission as well as its first trip into orbit.

For NASA, however, the engine problem matters for a different reason. A modified version of Starship is being developed to carry astronauts between lunar orbit and the Moon's surface under the Artemis program.

NASA currently wants to conduct an Earth-orbit demonstration involving commercial lunar landers as early as 2027 before returning astronauts to the lunar surface in 2028.

That schedule already has little room for things to go wrong. NASA's inspector general warned earlier this year that SpaceX's lunar lander development was running behind schedule and that further technical problems or failed flight tests could affect upcoming Artemis missions.

Now engineers have another failure to understand. How serious it becomes will depend on what went wrong with the Raptor engine. If the problem can be fixed without holding up future Starship flights, NASA's timetable may remain intact.

A wider issue requiring redesigns or lengthy testing would be harder to absorb. SpaceX also still has several major Starship milestones ahead, including demonstrating crucial technologies needed for lunar missions.