🚀 NASA CONFIRMS: STARSHIP TO LAUNCH FROM HISTORIC LC-39A!
NASA confirmed Friday, Oct. 23, at its Artemis Acceleration briefing at Kennedy Space Center that a SpaceX Starship test lander will launch from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) in Florida as part of Artemis III, now set for summer 2027. 🇺🇸🌕
Why this pad matters: 39A is the pad America went to the Moon from. Built in the 1960s for the Saturn V, it launched Apollo 4 in 1967, Apollo 8 — the first crewed trip around the Moon — and Apollo 11, which lifted off July 16, 1969, for the first Moon landing. It later launched Skylab, the first shuttle flight in 1981 and the last in 2011, and SpaceX took it over in 2014, flying the first Falcon Heavy from it in 2018.
One correction to earlier reports: Artemis III is no longer a Moon landing. Under the restructured plan, it’s a 14-day crewed rehearsal in low Earth orbit. The sequence: Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2 test lander launches first on New Glenn from LC-36; then the four astronauts launch aboard SLS/Orion from pad 39B, dock with Blue Moon on day three and test its cabin and life support; then Starship launches from 39A, and Orion docks with its nose for about two hours on day eight — a docking-only test, with no crew transfer into Starship. The actual lunar landing is now Artemis IV, in 2028.
When: summer 2027 — no exact date yet. And Starship’s first Florida launch in general is expected in the coming months, ahead of Artemis III.
Can we see it from North Carolina? Maybe, if the conditions line up: a northeast trajectory just after sunset or before sunrise, when sunlight lights the exhaust plume high above. Florida launches have been spotted that way over the Outer Banks and even photographed from Fayetteville. A daytime launch, realistically, won’t be visible from here — but NASA and SpaceX livestream every launch.
🌕 The next chapter of lunar exploration is taking shape — from the same pad that started the first one.
#SpaceX #Starship #NASA #ArtemisIII #MoonMission #LC39A #SpaceExploration
📷 NASA
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