The Starship lander NASA will fly on Artemis IV — tested first during Artemis III, with no crew cabin
From the Space digest for Oct 26, 2026
What happened: AutoEvolution reports (October 26, ~12:20 PM ET) that the Starship lunar lander — the SpaceX human landing system earmarked for the Artemis IV Moon mission — will be put through its tests during the Artemis III mission next year, and that the spacecraft in that test configuration comes with no crew cabin.
What's genuinely new: the vehicle assignment — Artemis IV-bound hardware riding the Artemis III test phase — and the no-crew-cabin detail, sitting under the dual-lander Earth-orbit test campaign NASA detailed at the October 23 Kennedy Space Center briefing and the October 24 report that NASA won't pick between the SpaceX and Blue Origin landers until Earth-orbit test results are in.
Watch: the Starship lander's test scope within the Artemis III profile, the path from the cabin-less test vehicle to the crewed design, and whether the early-2028 uncrewed-landing targets hold.
Sources AutoEvolution