Loading the ships
Illustration to scale: each Starship is about 52 m long. Docking and transfer as described by NASA and SpaceX.
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A depot in low orbit
For each Artemis landing, SpaceX plans to place a storage Starship — a depot — in low Earth orbit, about 400 kilometers up, to collect propellant.
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A tanker arrives
A tanker Starship launches from Texas or Florida, full of liquid oxygen and liquid methane, and closes in on the depot.
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Docked tail to tail
The two ships join at their aft ends, where the propellant connections are. The supercold liquids are pushed across from one tank to the other.
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Again, and again
The tanker undocks, flies home and another takes its place. NASA’s Inspector General counts more than ten tanker flights per landing, beginning more than 200 days before the crew launches.
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The lander fills
With the depot full, the lunar Starship docks and loads the propellant it needs to reach lunar orbit, land and climb back up to Orion.
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To the Moon
Fully loaded, the lander leaves Earth orbit. None of this has flown yet: the first ship-to-ship transfer is still to be demonstrated.