Upcoming Space Excitements in 2025: Scheduled Launches, Initial Illuminations, Encounters, and Other Thrilling Events
2024 was a monumental year for our understanding of the cosmos and the spaceflight industry. As we bid adieu to the past, we eagerly look forward to the trailblazing ventures taking flight this year.
For your entertainment, we're spotlighting over a dozen projects about to shatter records and paint a clearer picture of the potential gains from space exploration and cosmic research. These mission milestones, unfolding over the next 12 months, are reminders of the diverse dimensions of space research - all of which are significant and extremely intriguing. Without further ado, here's your upcoming year in space.
Lucy's Close Encounter
Illustration: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
The Lucy spacecraft, christened after the remarkable fossil that shares its name, was launched into the cosmos in October 2021. Its mission? To investigate the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, an unexplored population of space rocks. Lucy has traversed tens of millions of miles through space and recently visited the unique Dinkinesh binary asteroid in January 2023.
This year, Lucy will embark on a close encounter with the Trumpeter jawbone asteroid on April 20. Mark your calendars, as this will be the spacecraft's only asteroid encounter for the year, with the next one not scheduled until August 2027. If you're fascinated by asteroids that may provide insights into the formation of planets and the solar system, you'll want to keep an eye on this April encounter.
Juno's Swan Song
Illustration: NASA
Juno, the spacecraft, had a bustling 2024, with close-up images of Jupiter's moons and the discovery of a lava lake on the most volcanically active body in the solar system. The climax of its mission arrives this year, with Juno's plunge into Jupiter on September 15, marking the end of its 14-year journey. We'll be sure to prepare an emotional farewell for the dedicated spacecraft.
Examining Earth's Systems from Space
An illustration of the NISAR satellite in orbit. Illustration: NASA
In March, the NISAR satellite - a collaborative project between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) - will be launched. This satellite will scan almost all of Earth's land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days, aiding scientists in tracking shifts in our planet's surface and better understanding the impact of climate change. With constant Earth observation from space, NASA and ISRO will gain a comprehensive understanding of our planet's systems. NISAR will operate for a minimum of three years and orbit our planet at a distance of approximately 464 miles (747 kilometers) above the surface.
Debut of the Space Rider Spaceplane
An artist’s concept of ESA’s Space Rider in orbit. Illustration: ESA
A miniature spacecraft the size of two minivans is set to glide through Earth's orbit this year, executing scientific experiments in zero-gravity environments. The European Space Agency's (ESA) Space Rider is scheduled for its maiden voyage in late 2025.
Space Rider will be launched using the Vega-C rocket and will stay in orbit for around two months, according to ESA. Upon completion, it will return to Earth, deliver its payloads, and prepare for its next launch. This vehicle, intended for low Earth orbit, will provide ESA with regular access to space, transporting scientific payloads to various orbital altitudes for various applications.
Spaceplanes are all the rage these days. These reusable rockets operate in orbit like a spacecraft but can land like an airplane, ensuring quick turnarounds between missions.
First Flight of Sierra Space's Dream Chaser
Illustration: Sierra Space
The world's first commercial spaceplane is set to take flight this year (hopefully). Sierra Space's Dream Chaser is planned for launch no earlier than May, with scheduled docking at the International Space Station per a NASA contract.
Dream Chaser will launch atop the United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket (originally planned for takeoff in 2024, but changes to the rocket's schedule have delayed its launch). Equipped with foldable wings that unfurl during flight and capturing power from solar panels, this partially reusable vehicle features heat shield tiles to protect it from intense temperatures during reentry, followed by smooth runway landings upon return.
Colorado-based Sierra Space was awarded a NASA Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract in 2016, obligating it to provide at least seven uncrewed missions to the ISS to deliver cargo.
Firefly's Delivery to the Moon
An illustration of the Blue Ghost mission on the surface of the Moon. Credit: Firefly Aerospace
There's a special delivery en route to the Moon. Space startups are readying landers designed for regular drops of payloads to the lunar surface, readying humanity for a sustained lunar presence.
In the midst of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payloads Services (CLPS), Firefly Aerospace is readying its Blue Ghost spacecraft for a journey to the Moon in mid-January. Following launch, the craft will take approximately 45 days to reach the Moon, aiming for a landing site in Mare Crisium, a historic asteroid impact basin filled with basaltic lava. Equipped with 10 scientific instruments, Blue Ghost is designed for a full lunar day's operation (equivalent to 14 days on Earth).
Texan company Firefly is fulfilling a $93.3 million contract with NASA for its initial lunar lander, as part of the CLPS program. In 2024, other companies like Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines launched their respective lunar landers, but landing on the Moon's dusty surface proved challenging. Astrobotic's Peregrine lander, unfortunately, lost propellant at a critical rate, preventing any chances of lunar touchdown. But Intuitive Machines managed to make history as the first private company to touch down on the Moon with its Odysseus lander, despite ending up tipped over on its side.
ispace's Resilience Moon lander
Blue Ghost won't be alone in its voyage – the ispace's Resilience lander will accompany it. Both lunar landers are scheduled to embark on their lunar missions in mid-January, hitching a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. If everything runs smoothly, Resilience will touch down in Mare Frigoris, a region located in the Moon's far northern regions. The lunar lander will carry a small rover named Tenacious, as well as numerous scientific instruments from Japan's private space sector, all designed to investigate the lunar surface.
January's mission will mark ispace's second attempt at landing on the Moon. In April 2023, the Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) Lunar Lander suffered a tragic crash on the Moon's surface, carrying commercial and government-owned payloads, along with a tiny two-wheeled transformable robot from the Japanese space agency.
Intuitive Machines returns to Moon
In February 2024, Intuitive Machines made history as the first commercial enterprise to make landfall on the Moon with its Odysseus lander. The company's first mission deployed 12 payloads near the Malapert A crater in the Moon's south pole region, achieving this after an eight-day journey through space.
For 2025, Intuitive Machines aims to build upon its success with the Athena lander. Scheduled for launch in February, the IM-2 mission will carry a drill and a mass spectrometer to explore the presence of ice water beneath the lunar surface. Intuitive Machines will utilize NASA's NOVA-C landing platform under its CLPS contract, aiming for touchdown near the Shackleton connecting ridge, close to Shackleton Crater in the south pole region. To complement its drilling operations, the IM-2 mission will also trial a Nokia LTE 4G communication system on the Moon.
A new perspective on the Sun's electric environment
An artistic illustration of the IMAP mission. Illustration courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Princeton University/Steve Gribben
NASA's Interstellar Mapping Acceleration Probe (IMAP) is set to launch in late 2025, loaded with 10 scientific instruments to investigate the sun's magnetic field bubble, the heliosphere. IMAP will operate from the L1 Lagrange point, situated approximately 932,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. From its stationary orbit, IMAP will map the heliosphere, examining the diverse particles found in interplanetary space, along with the interaction of solar wind with celestial material within the Milky Way.
Originally slated for a 2024 launch, IMAP's schedule was delayed multiple times. IMAP will not be launching solo – it will carry two rideshare missions: NASA's Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's SWFO-L1 (Space Weather Follow-On at L1).
Starship's crucial propellant refueling test
SpaceX's Starship made remarkable progress in 2024 with outstanding capture of the oversized booster during the fifth test flight. In 2025, SpaceX will take it up a notch by attempting the daring in-orbit propellant refueling of Starship.
Credit: SpaceX
During an interview with Spaceflight Now, Kent Chojnacki, Deputy Manager for NASA's Human Landing System program, indicated that SpaceX's Starship in-orbit fueling demonstration might take place in March 2025. This test consists of two Starships rendezvousing in orbit and transferring fuel between them, marking an unusual and revolutionary event in space exploration.
SpaceX is under a $53.2 million contract with NASA, signed in 2020, to utilize Starship for in-orbit fuel transfers. SpaceX aims to develop essential technologies to establish a sustainable Moon presence and conduct crewed missions to Mars through the use of in-orbit refueling.
Launch of Vast Space's Haven-1 space station
As part of the Artemis program, NASA has partnered with SpaceX and other companies to develop technical infrastructure for lunar habitation and human exploration. Vast Space's Haven-1 space station is one of these ambitious projects, intended to revolutionize lunar living and terraforming potential. Constructed from 12 modules, Haven-1 will be assembled and transported to orbit by a fleet of starships, providing future generations of astronauts and settlers with a permanent home on the Moon.
In 2025, a California-based enterprise aims to lead the charge as the first company to launch a commercial space station into orbit. The company, named Vast, is planning to unveil Haven-1, set to blast off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to low Earth orbit no earlier than August of that year. Founded by cryptocurrency billionaire Jed McCaleb, Vast is a fresh face in the space industry, but it's making ambitious waves, aiming to secure a valuable spot in Earth's orbit.
Vast's ambitions involve constructing a 328-foot-long (100 meters) multi-module space station in orbit. The space station will generate artificial gravity through spinning. After the launch of Haven-1, Vast intends to send a four-person crew to the space station using a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. The crew will spend up to 30 days in orbit.
The Ascendancy of Digital Stargazing
Presenting one of 2025's majestic undertakings is the inaugural illumination of the Vera Rubin Observatory. An innovative 3.2-gigapixel camera, or 3.2 billion-pixel camera, has been under development for numerous years and is the heart of the observatory. Each night, it collects 15 terabytes of data on the southern sky, contributing to the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a ten-year examination of the ever-changing cosmos, both near and incredibly distant. Combining all the collected data amounts to 60 petabytes, providing insights into the evolution of the universe and its components.
The Milky Way, in particular, will see millions of stars' movements captured by LSST, resulting in a 1,000-times-larger-volume map of celestial objects compared to past surveys. You can track the observatory's development here. Initially programmed for July 4, 2025, first light has been slated.
Axiom Mission 4
Axiom Space anticipates launching its fourth mission to the ISS in the spring of 2025, carrying a four-astronaut crew to low Earth orbit. Axiom Space has previously sent three private crews to the ISS, and this time around, they've selected astronauts hailing from India, Poland, and Hungary. Peggy Whitson, who is Axiom Space's director of human spaceflight and a former NASA astronaut, will head as the Ax-4 commander. Axiom Space's inaugural private mission, Ax-1, launched to the ISS in April 2022. Following this trial run, NASA acknowledged learning essential lessons for future private space station missions. As a result, NASA updated certain rules, including the prerequisite for private astronaut missions to be led by a former NASA astronaut.
An Exhaustive Survey of the Universe's Galactic and Stellar Portfolio
Image courtesy of Caltech
Scheduled for launch in February 2025, NASA will embark on the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer, also known as SPHEREx. This two-year mission will survey the cosmos, recording more than 450 million galaxies and over 100 million stars in the solar system in optical and near-infrared light. Some of the light SPHEREx gathers will be from beyond 10 billion light-years away.
Researchers will utilize this data to create a 96-color sky map, offering the most sophisticated color resolution. SPHEREx will also pinpoint target objects for more in-depth observations with telescopes, including the Webb Space Telescope—NASA's most distinguished space-based observatory.
SPHEREx's universe map will help astronomers decipher the genesis of galaxies and how water and organic molecules are dispersed in stellar nurseries, where stars are born.
The Lucy spacecraft will have its closest encounter with the Trumpeter jawbone asteroid on April 20, 2025, marking a significant event in asteroid research and planetary formation studies.
In 2025, the European Space Agency's Space Rider will embark on its maiden voyage, carrying scientific experiments to conduct zero-gravity research and paving the way for regular low Earth orbit access for ESA.
