Unveiling the Cosmic Adventures: Must-Watch Space Missions of 2025!

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The year 2025 is poised to captivate with a variety of thrilling and impressive space missions.

Anticipated are numerous attempts at moon landings, prominent test launches of SpaceX‘s Starship megarocket, human space exploration ventures, and asteroid sampling missions.

Here’s a glimpse at some of the most enticing space activities projected for the upcoming year.

1) A plethora of moon missions

January is anticipated to be thrilling for space travel, as the year is about to commence with a fleet of robotic lunar lander missions.

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander is scheduled to launch from Florida in mid-January on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Transporting 10 NASA payloads, Blue Ghost’s mission, lasting 60 days, aims for a landing in the Mare Crisium impact basin, where it plans to conduct scientific work for almost two weeks. Along with the same rocket will be the Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander for Japanese space exploration corporation ispace. This mission will opt for a low-energy trajectory to the moon, with a landing expected in the Mare Frigoris region four to five months post-launch. The ispace lander also includes a minirover named Tenacious.

Intuitive Machines, which landed on the moon with its robotic IM-1 mission in February 2024, plans to launch IM-2 as early as January, also aboard a Falcon 9. This mission is tailored for the lunar south pole — featuring a payload aimed at discovering water — and intends to land in the vicinity of Shackleton Connecting Ridge.

IM-2 will also carry rovers and hoppers from U.S., Japanese, and Finnish collaborators along with payloads for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. IM-3, a third Nova-C lander from Intuitive Machines, could be launched later in 2025. Blue Origin might also initiate its MK1 Lunar Lander pathfinder mission in 2025, while Astrobotic’s Griffin Mission 1 is also scheduled for 2025, following its unsuccessful attempt with the Peregrine lunar lander in 2024.

Related: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the moon in a nail-biting descent of the private Odysseus lander, marking a first for the U.S. since 1972

2) Starship test flights

Although still a part of a testing and demonstration initiative, Starship launches are currently among the most significant, breathtaking, and widely followed space activities.

With SpaceX seemingly poised to secure approval for up to 25 Starship launches in 2025, the largest and most powerful rocket ever constructed will become a central feature. The flight schedule could even potentially involve docking two Starships in orbit to demonstrate propellant transfer, and even an uncrewed demonstration of the Starship Human Landing System, a lunar variant of Starship, designated for NASA’s

Artemis 3 mission in mid-2027.

3) Haven-1 moving to orbit

As the era of the International Space Station approaches its conclusion, commercial space stations are prepared to take the lead. The California-based startup Vast intends to launch Haven-1 on a Falcon 9 no sooner than August, with the facility designed to accommodate a four-member crew for a duration of up to 30 days. This private station aims to be a preliminary phase for a larger, modular private space station, named Haven-2. It pledges to offer a preview of the future of crewed space travel in low Earth orbit.

4) The end of Juno

Since its launch in 2011, NASA’s Juno mission has been navigating Jupiter since July 2016, examining the gas giant while returning stunning visuals, uncovering storms, and identifying active volcanoes during its flybys of the gas giant’s moons. However, the spacecraft is currently approaching the conclusion of its extended mission, which commenced in 2021.

Juno is expected to be deorbited into the Jovian atmosphere in September, concluding the mission and ensuring the spacecraft does not contaminate a moon such as Europa, which could potentially sustain life. This moment will resonate with the demise of Cassini, which disintegrated in Saturn’s atmosphere in 2017.

Related: Jupiter: A guide to the largest planet in the solar system

5) The launch of a formidable new sky surveyor

The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) is a NASA observatory designed to conduct an all-sky survey in near-infrared wavelengths, aiming to generate a 3D map encompassing over 450 million galaxies as well as 100 million stars within our own Milky Way. The conical, car-sized spacecraft is scheduled to be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in February.

6) China’s Tianwen 2 asteroid-sampling initiative

In recent years, China has achieved several significant milestones, with the establishment of its own space station, obtaining the first samples from the far side of the moon, and successfully landing on Mars, to name a few. The nation plans to undertake its inaugural asteroid sampling task in 2025, with the Tianwen 2 mission slated for launch around May on a Long March 3B rocket.

Tianwen 2 will explore the near-Earth asteroid Kamo’oalewa utilizing two distinct landing and sampling technologies. Following this, it will deliver a return capsule to Earth in 2026 before the main spacecraft embarks on a prolonged journey to investigate a main-belt comet. This mission could ascertain if the asteroid is indeed a fragment of the moon ejected by a meteor collision, and pave the way for future Chinese sample-return initiatives to distant celestial objects.

7) India enhancing its Gaganyaan human spaceflight program

India is aspiring to join Russia (and the former Soviet Union), the United States, and China as possessing autonomous human spaceflight capabilities through its Gaganyaan program. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is aiming for a first crewed flight in 2026, while 2025 will feature critical test flights as part of this agenda. These will encompass the G1 uncrewed test flight, which will carry a humanoid robot dubbed Vyomitra (meaning “space friend” in Sanskrit).

Related Stories:

— Starship and Super Heavy: SpaceX’s deep-space transportation for the moon and Mars

— Juno: Taking a long look at Jupiter

— Dual moon mission! SpaceX to deploy 2 private lunar landers in January

8) Flybys, new launch vehicles, and more

In addition to the array of captivating missions set to commence (or conclude) in 2025, there will be several flybys of planetary bodies by ongoing missions, including BepiColombo (Mercury), Europa Clipper and Hera (Mars), Lucy (asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson), and JUICE (Venus), providing opportunities to capture striking images and test scientific instruments.

The year will also mark the inaugural flights of new rockets from various parts of the globe — encompassing Rocket Lab’s Neutron, RFA One from Rocket Factory Augsburg in Germany, Zhuque-3 from Landspace in China, and potentially Stoke Space’s Nova — in addition to regular human spaceflight operations at the ISS and Tiangong space station.