What's Happening in Space in 2025?

Mission(s) Moon

Whilst the long-awaited Artemis II has been delayed until 2026, there is still plenty to get excited about when it comes to the Moon this year.

The first of NASA’s new line of lunar landers, Blue Ghost, is set to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket this January. Made by Firefly Aerospace, these landers are part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative that will scout the Moon’s resources and assist the scientific goals of the Artemis program. This first mission will see the lander carry just under 100kg of payload to the surface, including instruments used to study lunar regolith and measure the Moon’s distance from Earth.

Blue Ghost will be joined on the Moon by IM-2,  set to launch in February and is also part of the CLPS program. After the success of IM-1 last year, Intuitive Machines will deliver their Athena lander near the lunar south pole, where they will drill to uncover water ice using NASA’s PRIME-1 robot. A drone will also look to provide a measurement of hydrogen at the Marston crater, which would be the first time this indicator of water will have been discovered in a permanently shadowed region of the Moon.

A successful mission here would pave the way for IM-3 to launch this autumn, studying the unexpected magnetic field around the Reiner Gamma swirl - a lunar swirl feature on the Moon. NASA also hope that the Griffin Mission 1 will take place this year, carrying a mass simulator in place of the original payload of the VIPER rover, which was cancelled in 2024.

And it’s not just NASA looking to get to the Moon, as Japanese company ispace is set to launch its Resilience lunar lander. Amongst the payload for this Hakuto-R Mission 2 (which is primarily being used as a technological demonstration), there will be a memory disk containing 275 Earth languages as well as other cultural artefacts, in an attempt to preserve some of humankind’s existence in the event something happens to us here on Earth. Both Blue Ghost and Hakuto-R M2 are scheduled to lift off together on the same Falcon 9 rocket this January.

Space Rider

Let’s talk about ESA for a second.

The European Space Agency plans to unveil its first reusable space transportation system this year with Space Rider. Roughly the size of two minivans, the uncrewed robotic laboratory is scheduled for launch late-Summer/early-Autumn time and will allow experiments in its cargo bay to benefit research in pharmaceutics, biomedicine, biology and physical science. This first launch will stay in low-orbit for two months before returning to Earth with its payloads, landing on a runway to be unloaded and refurbished for another flight.

Commercial Space Station

Potentially joining CNSA’s Tiangong and the multinational ISS this year is a new space station…. and this one could see tourists visit it in the future.

Aerospace company Vast (or Vast Space if you enjoy a pun) are set to launch Haven-1, the first ever commercial space station, in the second half of 2025. As well as having areas for scientific research, the station will also include a dome for viewing and photography plus permanent Wi-Fi. Crews will also be able to use artificial gravity to conduct experiments in a lunar environment (you may notice a general Moon theme in a lot of missions planned this year.) This would be only the second time artificial gravity has been purposely produced in a crewed spacecraft, after Gemini 11 in 1966. Unable to support life independently, Haven-1 will use the life support systems of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that the astronauts travel in to help accommodate missions of up to thirty days.

Speaking of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company will look to perform a propellant transfer in space using two docked Starship spacecrafts. If successful, this will allow SpaceX to refuel their Starship HLS vehicle, ready for a 2026 uncrewed demonstration of a lunar landing (yep, Moon again.)

Current (and one soon to be former) Missions

Everything I’ve spoken about so far has been based on what’s currently scheduled for 2025. But things often change in space, and it’s highly unlikely that everything written about here will actually happen. In fact, only half the missions I mentioned in last year’s blog ended up happening (some of which I’ve predicted again for this year!) But to finish off, barring something going drastically wrong with a spacecraft or a basic scientific principle, here are some things that are practically certain to happen this year.

Several current missions will use gravity assists from planet’s orbits to give them the energy needed to reach their destinations. The first to do this will be BepiColombo on 9 January, as for the sixth time it will use Mercury's gravity to slow itself down ahead its entry into the planet’s orbit next year. Europa Clipper and JUICE will use Mars and Venus respectively to help propel them forward to study some of Jupiter’s moons early next decade. Also using the Martian orbit for a gravity assist will be the Hera mission, which at the same time will also conduct observations of one of Mars’ two moons, Deimos. And the Lucy mission will conduct a flyby of main belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson on 20 April on its quest to visit several different asteroids over the next decade.

And finally it’s a sad goodbye to NASA’s Juno mission. Having launched in 2011 and orbited Jupiter for the previous nine years, Juno has become one of the most iconic space missions of the twenty-first century. Assuming Juno has no damage that would cause an earlier retirement date, the mission will end on 17 September after its 76^th perijove (the point in a spacecrafts orbit where it is closest to Jupiter’s centre.)

And if none of that stuff happens I’ll eat my hat. Join me in twelve months to see if I require a new fedora!