Resolves YES if Starship does any of the following:
Lands on the Moon
Crashes into the Moon
Enters Lunar orbit
Enters a halo orbit associated with the L1 or L2 Earth–Moon Lagrange points.
The landing/crashing or orbital insertion must take place prior to 2026, local time at the launch site from which the flight launched.
Update 2025-06-12 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator has confirmed that the following will not be sufficient for a YES resolution:
Lunar gravity assists
Free return trajectories
To resolve YES, the spacecraft must slow down enough to "stick around" the Moon by fulfilling one of the conditions originally listed in the description (orbiting, landing, or crashing).
1,000Just for clarity:
A lunar free return to Earth orbit is not sufficient?
A lunar gravity assist to an Earth escape is not sufficient? Regardless of whether it demonstrates more than sufficient delta-v near the moon in order to enter lunar orbit?
They may at some point want to launch one to somewhere safe to test engine restart after a long period of coasting. But if they run out of time first trips to Mars may become this test? In 2025 seems unlikely given first v3 launch aiming for end of year. Might not make that and even if they do, seems more likely to still be wanting more tests on recovery and reusability than engine restarts. Free return for a faster re-entry test might be a little more plausible. That still seems doubtful for first v3 launch but maybe they can fit in a couple of such launches before end of year?
@ChristopherRandles I had better not include lunar gravity assists or free return trajectories. There has to be a line somewhere, so better stick to only counting flights where it actually slows down enough to stick around.