Space Missions to Watch in 2025

Space-weather sentinels, commercial lunar missions, and lots of planetary flybys are on tap this year.

Get ready for another busy year in spaceflight 2025. Of course, 2024 was an amazing year, as NASA’s Europa Clipper launched on its way to Jupiter, and ESA’s Hera mission departed to asteroid Dimorphos, as a follow-on to NASA’s 2022 DART mission. Meanwhile, lunar missions experienced a rough round of “lithobraking,” as JAXA’s SLIM and Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 made lop-sided landings on the Moon. On Mars, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter flew one last time before coming to rest and ending its days (as do so many mobile Mars missions) as a stationary weather station that’s expected to store data for another generation.

As ever, space is hard. But 2024 also set another launch record for the fifth year in a row, with 254 cataloged missions reaching orbit (versus 212 in 2023) — the most ever for a calendar year. SpaceX alone accounted for 134 of these, 90 of which were Starlink deployments.

First, as ever, a caveat is in order: This list notes what’s planned for in spaceflight in 2025, as of the close of 2024. Look at any of these preview posts from previous years, and only about half of the missions planned actually left the launch pad on a given year. A case in point was the James Webb Space Telescope, which was launching “next year” for several years, until it finally launched from the Kourou Space Center in French Guiana on Christmas Day 2021.

Top Missions For Spaceflight 2025

This year opens with many missions already underway headed to new targets across the solar system, with a few new ones leaving the Earth and at least one (Juno) possibly reaching its conclusion. Meanwhile, India may join the human spaceflight community, while NASA still struggles to get humans out of LEO with the Artemis Moon initiative. And 2025 may also see the first commercial space-station venture in orbit.

We might also see orbital testing and refuel operations for SpaceX’s Starship get under way in 2025. This demonstration is needed for Starship HLS (Human Landing System) to head to the Moon under the current launch architecture, and for the Artemis initiative to succeed. Already as we go into the year, the Artemis 2 lunar flyby featuring the first crewed Orion/SLS launch has been bumped to 2026 at the very earliest.

China plans to launch its first ambitious asteroid sample return mission in 2025, while NASA’s twin Escapade spacecraft may head to Mars, breaking a lull in missions to the Red Planet.

LUNAR Missions in Spaceflight 2025

NASA has many Moon missions planned in 2025, several of which are part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

First, a Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from the Kennedy Space Center during a six-day window this January, with two landers bound for the Moon. The first is Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander with 10 payloads headed to the Mare Crisium. Blue Ghost will take 45 days to get there and is expected to last 14 days on the lunar surface. It may also witness a solar eclipse from the Moon if it lasts until March 14th’s total lunar eclipse (as seen from the Earth).

The second is Japanese company ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander (a follow-up to the failed Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander in 2023) including the Resilience lander and ispace Europe’s Tenacious micro-rover. Resilience is slated to land at the Mare Frigoris (Sea of Cold).

SpaceX may also launch IM 2 for Intuitive Machines and the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment (PRIME 1) on IM 2 in February on a Nova C lander. Part of the Artemis initiative, IM-2 will head to Shackleton Ridge in the lunar south pole region to search for water ice. The lander will also carry a micro rover hopper.

Next up is Astrobotics’ Griffin lander with the Cube Rover in September or late 2025, with Griffin Mission 1. Sadly, this was supposed to carry the (now canceled) VIPER rover for NASA. This mission is headed to Nobile crater near the lunar south pole.

Another CLPS IM3 mission with third Nova C lander for Intuitive Machines, the Lunar Vertex rover, CADREx 3 and PRISM is scheduled for October.

Other potential lunar missions to watch for in 2025 include:

The Israeli SpaceIL/ISA company’s Beresheet 2, a follow up to the failed Beresheet 1 mission, which crashed on April 11, 2019. Also, the joint ESA/Israel LSAS Lunar lander may launch in 2025.

Also going to the Moon in 2025 is ESA’s Lunar Pathfinder mission, headed to lunar orbit. This will pave the way for ESA’s Moonlight communications constellation the agency wants to place in lunar orbit.

Interplanetary Missions in Spaceflight 2025

In 2025, most planetary missions are already under way, with a few exceptions.occur

No Mars missions left Earth in the 2024 window. Launches usually take place several months prior to the planet’s opposition, but this is the second consecutive time (along with 2022) that no spacecraft have taken advantage of the favorable launch geometry. JAXA’s Mars MMX mission to the Martian moons slipped to 2026 due to technical issues with the new HIII rocket launch carrier. JAXA’s HIII rocket failed on its initial launch in late 2023, but it made three successful orbital flights in 2024. ESA’s Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover slipped to 2028/2029 due to ongoing technical issues, mainly involving parting ways with Russia and Roscosmos due to the invasion and ongoing war in Ukraine. Specifically, Russia was to supply the landing platform, and components on the mission were removed and returned to Russia in 2023. NASA is now working with ESA to build a landing system and getting the rover to Mars by the end of this decade.

NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (Escapade) mission may head to Mars this year. Part of NASA’s Small, Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) initiative, Escapade is two spacecraft designed to study how the solar wind interacts with the Mars magnetosphere and the loss of the tenuous Martian atmosphere. Escapade is a low-cost mission and would be notable for launching outside the usual window, and instead taking the long road to Mars. Much hinges on launch carrier Blue Origin, and how its New Glenn rocket fares on its inaugural launch in January.

Rocket Lab’s Venus Life Finder mission with the first commercial launch to Venus is now slated for 2026 at the very soonest.

China’s Tianwen 2 asteroid sample-return spacecraft launches on a Long March 3B rocket this year in May, and it promises to be the biggest mission of the year for China’s space agency. The craft will rendezvous with asteroid 469219 Kamo‘oalewa in 2026 and comet 311P/PanSTARRS in 2034. China has proven proficient on reaching Mars and returning lunar samples, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that China will complete a Mars sample return by the end of this decade.

Farther afield, NASA’s New Horizons mission will transition to gathering heliophysics data as part of its new low-activity mode. It’s strange to think: New Horizons will pass a decade this year, since its historic Pluto-Charon flyby in 2015. Voyagers 1 and 2 are still active, though Voyager 2 had a few computer-glitch scares in 2024.

Finally, NASA’s Juno mission may come to an end in September 2025. Juno completed several flybys past the major Jovian moons in 2024, and provided new insights on the interiors of Io and Europa. The decision to end Juno will hinge on the state of the spacecraft, now battered from intense radiation exposure near Jove. Not bad, considering that Juno had mechanical troubles almost immediately after arrival in orbit in 2016. Like Galileo, a de-orbit into Jupiter was the original plan to end Juno (to protect the moons from contamination), but no firm date has been set.

Spaceflight 2025 In Earth Orbit

The International Space Station continues its role as humanity’s orbital outpost, continuously occupied since November 2000. NASA has stated plans to perform a controlled de-orbit of the station some time around early 2031. The ISS has company, as China’s now completed Tiangong space station is now hosting permanent crew rotations.

We may see the start of transition to commercial stations in 2025, as Vast plans to launch the first module of their Haven 1 station on a Falcon 9 rocket in August.

Meanwhile, a trio of orbiting coronagraphs are poised to study the Sun in 2025. The Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX) aboard the ISS and the Compact Coronagraph (CCOR 1) aboard NOAA’s GOES 19 mission all begin science operations in 2025. ESA’s Proba 3 free-flying coronagraph should also begin science operations in early 2025.

On February 27th, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will take NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions to a low-altitude orbit. SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) will perform an all-sky survey in the infrared to gather the spectra of millions of galaxies. PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) will deploy four micro-satellites to explore the middle corona of the Sun.

IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) also launches on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on April 29th. Riding along with IMAP to orbit will be the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (also called GLIDE, for Global Lyman-alpha Imagers of the Dynamic Exosphere) and a space-weather sentinel called SWFO-L1 (short for Space Weather Follow On Lagrange 1).

ESA’s SMILE (Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) may also launch in late 2025.

On a bittersweet note, ESA’s remarkable Gaia astrometry mission ends in February 2025. Its planned successor is the Gaia NIR (Near-Infrared) mission, proposed for sometime in the 2030s.

Rocket Advances

Several heavy-lift rockets and carriers (essential for planetary spaceflight) are set to make their debut in 2025:

First up is Blue Origin’s two-stage New Glenn rocket. After several delays, its inaugural flight from Cape Canaveral is set for January 5th. Success for New Glenn and Blue Origin is crucial for several planned missions, including the Mars-bound ESCAPADE.

Rocket Lab also plans to introduce its large two-stage Neutron rocket in 2025. Neutron will fly sometime in 2025 from Wallops in Virginia.

Also on tap for 2025 is Rocket Factory Augsburg’s RFA One rocket, which could launch out of the SaxaVord Space Port in the Shetland Islands off the northern coast of Scotland. RFA will have the potential to deliver 300 kilograms (660 pounds) to a lunar transfer orbit.

ESA may test its Space Rider system in 2025. About the size of two minivans, Space Rider will offer a recoverable capability for long-term experiments in low-altitude orbits.

Finally, February may see India’s first uncrewed demonstration flight of the Gaganyaan capsule and LVM 3 rocket. If successful, a Gaganyaan capsule may carry India’s first astronauts into orbit by 2026.

Active Mission Flybys

Missions also use gravity and slingshot flybys as a means to get to their final destination. Some key flybys to watch for in 2025 include:

● BepiColombo’s sixth and final Mercury flyby on January 9th.

● NASA’s Europa Clipper flies past Mars on March 1st en route to arriving at Jupiter in 2030.

● ESA’s Hera flies past Mars (perhaps to observe Deimos) in March.

● NASA’s Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids flies 922 kilometers (573 miles) past asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson on April 20th.

● ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) flies past Venus on August 31st en route to Jupiter.

. . . and a Teaser for 2026

And there’s more in store. BepiColombo, built jointly by ESA and JAXA, should (finally!) begin orbiting Mercury in late 2026. Its arrival was delayed in early 2024 from a December 2025 arrival due to a thruster anomaly.

Xuntian (also known as the Chinese Space Station Telescope) is now slated to launch in 2026. The program is about three years behind its planned late-2023 launch date — a rare setback for the country that has kept most of its space missions on track. Covering the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared spectral regions (similar to Hubble), the observatory will orbit close to Tiangong to permit easy access for upgrade and repair. Xuntian is Chinese for “astronomical survey” or more literally “surveying the heavens.”

China also plans to introduce the Long March 10 variant rocket in 2026, which will be capable of putting 30-ton (27,000 kg) payloads onto Moon-bound trajectories. China closed out 2024 with engine tests for this future heavy-lift rocket:

Get set for another amazing year in spaceflight for 2025 and beyond.