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This year promises to be thrilling for space explorations.
The year 2025 will commence with two lunar landing efforts in January, followed by SpaceX’s bold trial to transfer propellants between two Starship vehicles in low Earth orbit — a vital milestone in assessing the company’s capability to use the spacecraft for missions to the moon and Mars. Later in 2025, Europe intends to inaugurate an uncrewed robotic lab, and NASA’s Juno spacecraft is likely to conclude its extended mission, ultimately disintegrating in Jupiter’s thick atmosphere.
Here are the most exciting space missions to anticipate in 2025.
Blue Ghost 1 and Intuitive Machines’ lunar landings
In mid-January, Firefly Aerospace from Texas plans to initiate the “Ghost Riders in the Sky” mission, which aims to transport a lunar lander equipped with 10 NASA payloads. This lunar lander will target Mons Latreille, a volcanic structure on the near side of the moon formed by volcanic activities over three billion years ago.
The lander, referred to as Blue Ghost 1, is anticipated to function during the daylight phase of a lunar day, approximately lasting 14 Earth days, during which it will collect information about the lunar regolith, or rocky terrain, and investigate how this rock interacts with the solar wind (a flow of charged particles ejected from the sun’s outer layer) and Earth’s magnetic field.
As its mission concludes, Blue Ghost 1 will capture images of the moon’s twilight and gather data on alterations that take place on the lunar surface during evening.
In parallel, Intuitive Machines from Texas aims to establish its IM-2 spacecraft on the moon’s south pole in February. This spacecraft plans to analyze the volatiles, or fragile chemical substances, in the regolith using a drill and mass spectrometer. Additionally, it will carry a small satellite named Lunar Trailblazer, designed to map water deposits on the moon, assisting NASA in identifying prospective landing sites for its Artemis missions. IM-2 is scheduled to follow a more direct path than Blue Ghost 1, with hopes of reaching the moon just one week after its launch.
SpaceX’s bold endeavor for in-orbit propellant transfer
SpaceX is preparing for an innovative trial aimed at transferring propellant from one Starship to another while docked in low Earth orbit. This demonstration is set for March 2025 and will involve launching two Starship vehicles without windows about three to four weeks apart, with the second one functioning as a refueling tanker for the first.
This test is an essential progression in proving that the spacecraft can be utilized for missions to the moon and, eventually, Mars. Current NASA strategies aiming for lunar and Martian explorations are dependent on the Human Landing System version of Starship. In theory, astronauts who board this system as part of the Artemis 3 mission are projected to reach the moon no earlier than mid-2027.
First NASA-ISRO Earth scientific mission
In March 2025, NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will collaborate to launch their first joint spacecraft as part of the Earth-observing NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, which is set to monitor much of the Earth’s land and ice nearly every week. Using two radar instruments capable of penetrating clouds both day and night, this spacecraft will measure the movements of the Earth’s surface down to minute fractions of an inch. These precise observations will aid scientists in tracking land shifts potentially signaling volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, as well as monitoring transformations in forests and agricultural areas.
The U.S. and India are also joining forces on a high-profile mission to send the first Indian astronaut — Indian Air Force test pilot Shubhanshu Shukla — to the International Space Station no earlier than April 2025 under the private Axiom Mission 4.
Launch of postponed “Blue” and “Gold” Mars satellites
NASA’s two satellites heading to Mars, engineered at the University of California, Berkeley, will investigate how and when the Red Planet lost its atmosphere. Now they are scheduled to launch no sooner than spring 2025, following a delay from their original planned launch in October 2024.
The satellites — labeled “Blue” and “Gold” as a tribute to UC Berkeley’s school colors — will circle Mars at varying altitudes to collect simultaneous data on the planet’s plasma and magnetic fields. Through such information, researchers aim to understand the mechanisms behind how atoms are stripped away from the Red Planet’s atmosphere.
This initiative, referred to as Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE), was suspended in September due to concerns regarding the readiness of the delivery vehicle, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. The alignment of Earth and Mars offers an optimal launch window every 26 months, making even minor scheduling adjustments potentially lead to significant delays. The launching in spring 2025 will necessitate a gravity assist past Venus, resulting in an extended travel duration by 1.5 years.
China’s mission to collect samples from a near-Earth asteroid
China is gearing up for an ambitious
A mission to gather fragments of a near-Earth asteroid, transport them back to Earth, and subsequently investigate a comet in the depths of space. The Tianwen-2 spacecraft, set to launch in May 2025, will intersect with 469219 Kamo’oalewa, a quasi-moon of our planet that was identified in 2016. Observations from the ground imply that, unlike most near-Earth asteroids, 469219 Kamo’oalewa might have been ejected from the moon’s exterior by a significant impact occurring between 10 million and 1 million years ago, a relatively recent event in the history of the solar system.
Tianwen-2 will execute remote sensing observations to evaluate potential landing locations before attempting to gather specimens from the space rock. Following this, the spacecraft will return the extraterrestrial treasures to Earth and utilize our planet’s gravity to propel itself into a seven-year course that will navigate it to the main-belt comet 311P/PANSTARRS in the mid-2030s.
Juno’s possible demise into Jupiter
NASA’s $1.1 billion Juno spacecraft has been examining Jupiter and its satellites since 2016. The mission, which received an extension, is destined to conclude in September 2025 when the spacecraft spirals into the gas giant, unless it withstands Jupiter’s extreme radiation.
As outlined in the mission strategy, Juno’s orbit will naturally deteriorate, enabling Jupiter’s gravity to draw the probe into the planet’s thick clouds. The final plunge, which will span approximately 5.5 days, will guarantee that the spacecraft and any earthly microbes that may have traveled along do not inadvertently pollute Jupiter’s ice-covered moon Europa, regarded by scientists as one of the prime spots in our solar system to seek extraterrestrial life.
Europe’s deployment of reusable uncrewed robotic laboratory
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Rider, an uncrewed robotic laboratory roughly the size of two minivans, is anticipated to launch in the third quarter of 2025. The space vehicle will remain in low Earth orbit for two months, during which the robotic lab will autonomously perform technology demonstrations and experiments in microgravity.
Upon concluding its mission, Space Rider will deorbit and land on a runway at Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana, where it will be refurbished for at least five additional flights. This space vehicle represents ESA’s effort to offer commercial clients economical end-to-end launch services, as part of a wider plan to ensure Europe retains independent, routine access to and from low Earth orbit.
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