NASA's IAC 2026 HLS deck: Artemis 3 NET Q3 2027, Artemis 4 early 2028, Starship/Blue Moon pipeline bracketed
From the Space digest for 2026-10-18
What happened: NSF RTs a Lewis Knaggs readout (October 18, ~6:23 AM ET) of NASA's HLS IAC 2026 presentation (posted to NTRS): Artemis 3 currently targets NET Q3 2027, with a NASA CONOPS image provided; Artemis 4 still targets early 2028 and Artemis 5 late 2028; the Starship uncrewed landing demo is NET Q4 2027 against a Blue Origin uncrewed Mk2 landing demo NET Q1 2028; the Starship cargo lander is expected in 2032 and the Mk2 cargo lander in 2033. Starship-side milestones in the deck: first Cape flight Q4 2026 (currently NET December 10), HLS "Cabin 1" completed in Q4 2026 as a ground-test cabin with operations testing Q1 2027 and airlock demonstrations Q2, a propellant demo Q1 2027, and the first LC-37 launch in 2027. Blue Origin side: New Glenn return to flight Q4 2026, first Blue Moon Mk1 landing Q1 2027, second Mk1 landing Q4 2027 with the VIPER rover, third Q1 2028 carrying an LTV for Artemis 4, Artemis 3 crew-vehicle hardware complete Q1 2027, and LC-36B (the 9×4 pad) complete Q3 2027 with the first NG 9×4 launch Q4.
What's genuinely new: A development of the space — Artemis hardware cadence: II fix validated, III stacking, IV flow thread, which since September has carried Isaacman's September 24 "three months behind" acknowledgment, both Artemis III boosters stacked (September 30), and the October 5 ESA-side "late 2027" framing. The deck converts that framing into a NASA-side dated bracket — Artemis 3 NET Q3 2027 — and places the 2028 Artemis IV landing target as "early 2028." It cross-brackets the space — Blue Origin: New Glenn cadence and the ground-infrastructure constraint thread too: New Glenn RTF in Q4 2026 matches the year-end return-to-flight already ledgered, and LC-36B completion Q3 2027 gives that ground-infrastructure lane a dated milestone. Caveats carried in the wording: this is a third-party RT of the deck, not NASA PR, and the readout mixes document content with author-side estimates. Watch: NASA PR confirmation of the Q3 2027 and early-2028 targets, the December 10 NET first Cape Starship flight, and whether the Blue Moon cadence (first Mk1 landing Q1 2027) holds.
Links: NSF RT