Space missions are so complex that they are often prepared years in advance; For example, from the time the James Webb telescope was scribbled on a napkin until we saw it in space, no more and no less than 25 years passed. Or to reach the Apollo Program it was necessary to first go through the manned Mercury and Gemini missions. Fortunately, the times between missions are becoming shorter and shorter, and this 2025 we will witness highly anticipated launches, rocket fire tests or how private companies have come to stay on the Moon, the new promised land. A year, without a doubt, very spatial. Coveted satellite The year is starting strong in space missions, especially with regard to our satellite. In mid-January we will see the launch of the Blue Ghost lunar lander, from the American company Firefly. It is a probe two meters high and just over three meters in diameter that will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Inside, ten payloads of NASA instruments that will have to be transported to the Mare Crisium impact basin, where it will carry out different scientific experiments for almost two weeks. It will not be the only probe that transports the Falcon 9 bound for the Moon. Also on board will be the Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander, from the Japanese company Ispace. This ship will take longer to arrive, as it will take advantage of gravitational pulls to fly saving fuel. Its destination will be the Mare Frigoris region, where it will have to land on the moon in May or June 2025. There it will also deploy a minirover called Tenacious. Firefly and Ispace will have competition on the Moon: the North American company Intuitive Machines, which landed on the Moon with its robotic mission IM-1 in February 2024, will launch IM-2 in January, also aboard a Falcon 9. The mission It is optimized for the lunar south pole (including a payload to search for water) and will aim to land in an area of Shackleton Crater. This mission also carries other American, Japanese and Finnish instruments, as well as payloads for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The next mission, IM-3, could be launched later in 2025. After its failed attempt in January 2024, the Peregrine probe, from the North American company Astrobotic, will try again this year, although there is still no fixed date. What we will not see Finally, in 2025 it will be the first manned mission in more than half a century to the Moon: NASA announced that Artemis 2, in which four astronauts will orbit our satellite in preparation before stepping on it, is delayed from September 2025 to April 2026. Elon Musk and his mega rocket 2025 promises to be as exciting as 2024 for SpaceX, especially due to the launch tests of its star rocket, Starship. If this year we saw how its two stages survived reentry and even SuperHeavy was captured in the air by the robotic arms of the landing platform, in the coming months it is likely that in one of the 25 flights that SpaceX intends to launch with prototypes we will see not only the recovery of both parts of Starship, but even two rockets in orbit docking to demonstrate the transfer of propellant and even an uncrewed demonstration of the Starship human landing system, the lunar variant of the megarocket by Elon Musk that will be used for the Artemis 3 mission, the return of a NASA crew to set foot on the Moon and which is scheduled for mid-2027. Illustration of what the two Starships would look like docked in space for the transmission test spaceXLast years of the ISS, new orbital platformsThe International Space Station (ISS) faces the final stretch of its life: NASA has hired SpaceX to deorbit it in 2030 and ends up disintegrating above the Earth’s atmosphere. However, low orbit will not be left without inhabitants: in a matter of a couple of years, China has already built and is operating its own space laboratory and there are several private initiatives that are considering providing their services about 400 kilometers above our heads. This is the case of the Californian startup Vast, which plans to launch the Haven-1 module no earlier than August, a probe capable of housing four people for a maximum of a month. This will be a first test of a larger module, the Haven-2, to which new compartments will be added as is the case with the ISS.Space Rider ESAThe European Space Agency (ESA) also does not want to lose position in low orbit and will launch for the first time this year Space Rider, an unmanned robotic laboratory the size of two vans. The idea is that it will be launched on a European Vega-C rocket in the third quarter of the year, to remain in orbit for two months. “The experiments in its cargo compartment will allow the demonstration of technology and will benefit research in the fields of pharmacy, biomedicine, biology and physics,” they explain from ESA. At the end of its mission, Space Rider will return to Earth with its payload and land on a runway to be unloaded and reconditioned for another flight, since it was born with the intention of being reusable. Farewell to JunoLaunched in 2011, the mission of the NASA Juno has changed our view of Jupiter, a planet whose surroundings it arrived in 2016 and which has revealed an atmosphere that extends far beyond its water clouds and a deep interior with a core of elements diluted heavy. But after eight years of mission (three years longer than initially planned), its end is near. Jupiter seen by Juno NASAY will live up to its discoveries: Juno is scheduled to leave orbit and enter the Jovian atmosphere in September, which will put an end to the mission and prevent the spacecraft from contaminating one of its nearby moons , like Europe, where researchers believe there could be conditions for life. The moment will remember the disappearance of Cassini, which burned up in the atmosphere of Saturn in 2017 after a spectacular flight. Also to MarsTakeoffs to the Red Planet are usually scheduled for the moments in which we are aligned with our neighbor, something that happens every 26 months . And although 2025 is outside this launch window, we will see at least one mission leave for Mars: Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE). This flight includes two NASA satellites designed by the University of California at Berkeley whose goal is to study how and when the Red Planet lost its atmosphere. It is scheduled to launch in spring 2025, following a delay to the mission’s original launch, scheduled for October 2024. ESCAPADE was suspended in September due to concerns that the launch vehicle, Blue’s New Glenn rocket Origin, was not ready. This delay will mean a necessary gravitational assist beyond Venus, which will extend the flight time by 1.5 years.SPHEREx, the celestial explorerThe Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (or SPHEREx) is a NASA observatory designed to conduct an all-sky survey at near-infrared wavelengths to create a 3D map of more than 450 million galaxies, as well as 100 million stars in our own Milky Way. The conical-shaped, car-sized spacecraft will launch, if all goes according to schedule, in February, mounted on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. China explores asteroidsThat China has become a new space power is not questioned by anyone: in recent years it has achieved important milestones such as building its own space station in record time, landing on the moon for the first time on the far side of the Moon and recovering samples of this unknown place, also to be the second country that has landed on Mars with a rover. And the idea is to continue advancing in 2025 as the Chinese space agency has proposed carrying out its first asteroid sampling mission. Thus, the Tianwen 2 spacecraft, which will be launched in May on a Long March 3B rocket, will fly to the asteroid Kamo’oalewa, a ‘nearby’ rock about 15 million kilometers away that ‘follows’ the Earth, and from which It is suspected that it may be a body that broke away from our Moon. Tianwen 2 will use two different types of landing and sampling technologies. It will then drop a return capsule to Earth in 2026 before the main spacecraft embarks on an extended journey to study a main belt comet. The mission could determine whether the asteroid is actually a piece of the Moon broken off by a meteorite impact and open possibilities for future Chinese sample return missions to deep space objects. Manned test flights from IndiaNot just the US .and China make up the new space race. One of the countries that is betting heavily on exploring beyond our terrestrial borders is India, which signed its first successful moon landing in 2023 (compared to the resounding failure of Russia, which at the same time crashed its Luna 25 probe into the regolith). . Now, the next objective will be manned flight, something that the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) hopes to achieve in 2026. However, 2025 will be a year of crucial tests, including the trip aboard G1, the humanoid robot named like Vyomitra (which in Sanskrit means ‘friend of space’).The humanoid robot Vyomitra that will be launched into space isroMission flyovers underwayBut apart from all the missions starting (or ending), there are others in progress that will reach important milestones this year. For example, there will be a series of flybys of planetary bodies by ongoing missions, including BepiColombo (bound for Mercury), Europa Clipper and Hera (which will fly over Mars to rely on its gravity), Lucy (which will encounter the asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson) and Juice (which will rise over Venus on its way to Jupiter), providing incredible opportunities to capture spectacular snapshots of their ‘levers’, as well as testing their instruments scientists.MORE INFORMATION news Unidentified, almost two centuries later, the volcanic eruption that caused the ‘ice summer’ of 1831 news No A ring measuring 2.5 meters and half a ton falls from the sky in a village in KenyaThe year will also witness of debut flights of new rockets from around the world, including Rocket Lab’s Neutron, Rocket Factory Augsburg’s RFA One in Germany, Landspace’s Zhuque-3 in China and potentially Stoke Space’s Nova, as well as activities regular human space flights to the ISS and the Tiangong space station. In short, an interesting space year.
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