US space agency NASA has repeatedly expressed concern that SpaceX's giant new Starship vehicle may not be ready to carry astronauts to the moon's surface.
SpaceX, a space company owned by billionaire Elon Musk, said on Thursday that it has proposed to NASA a "simplified" plan to send humans to the moon using its Starship rocket.
SpaceX's statement came as NASA presses its contractors to move more quickly toward reaching the lunar surface this decade.
"Since the contract was awarded, we have been consistently responsive to NASA as requirements for Artemis III have changed and have shared ideas on how to simplify the mission to align with national priorities," SpaceX wrote in a lengthy blog post on its website describing Starship progress.
"In response to the latest calls, we've shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety," the company added.
This year, NASA is reportedly entangled in political chaos over concerns that its moon landing contractors are not moving quickly enough amid the Trump administration's plans to reduce the agency's workforce and NASA's vacancy of a permanent administrator.
NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said last week that SpaceX was lagging in Starship development and that the agency would open up the company's Artemis contract to rival companies that can pitch a faster plan to land humans on the lunar surface.
However, SpaceX defended itself on October 30, saying that it has accomplished dozens of milestones associated with its Starship moon lander contract and that it plans to execute key future milestones next year, including a long-duration flight test.
Executing a complex in-space refuelling demonstration is a tricky process that has never been done before, but is required for Starship to have enough fuel to reach the lunar surface.
Each Starship vehicle will need to be refuelled multiple times in Earth orbit before it can reach the moon, Space.com reported. Multiple Starship "tanker" flights will take place to fill up the moon-bound Starship in space, per the architecture.
NASA had been expecting such a demonstration to occur as early as 2024, but SpaceX's whirlwind development and test launches of Starship have hit snags.
Later this year or early next year, the company plans to begin launching an upgraded Starship prototype outfitted with features designed for in-space refuelling.
SpaceX said the timing of the in-space refuelling test "will be driven by how upcoming flight tests debuting the new Starship V3 architecture progress, but both of these tests are targeted to take place in 2026."
SpaceX will use a modified upper stage of its Starship megarocket -- the biggest and most powerful launcher ever built -- for this very high-profile job. NASA tapped SpaceX in 2021 to use Starship for the first two Artemis missions.
But Starship isn't the only private vehicle that NASA plans to use as a crewed moon lander. In 2023, the agency announced that it had selected Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company, to provide a second Artemis human landing system.
Blue Origin secured the NASA contract to develop a human landing system for the Artemis V mission, but it did not win the initial Artemis contract.
The US space agency faces intense competition from China in its effort to return astronauts to the moon, where no humans have gone since the final US Apollo mission in 1972.