Technology

Launches and First Lights were a huge part of our understanding of space and the industry at large. We must now turn our attention to the ambitious projects which are just getting started. This year, we highlight over a dozen ambitious projects that are poised to achieve major milestones. These missions will unfold over the next year and aim to give a complete picture of how spaceflight can benefit us. This is a great reminder that there are many different types of space research, but it’s all important and exciting. Without further ado, here’s your year ahead in space.Lucy’s flyby Illustration: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center The Lucy spacecraft–named for the remarkable fossil of the same name–launched into space in October 2021. Its mission? Lucy has travelled tens of millions of miles through space, visiting the unique Dinkinesh binary asteroid in January 2023. Lucy is scheduled to fly by the Trojan asteroid Donaldjohanson, a near-pass, on April 20, this year. The next asteroid flyby is not scheduled until 2027. This will be Lucy’s only asteroid pass of the year. This April flyby is a must-see for anyone interested in the asteroids and how they could explain the formation of the solar system and planets. NASA The year 2025 will be even more dramatic, as the Juno mission ends this year. The Juno mission is ending this year, so 2025 will be a very dramatic one. We’ll be sure to publish a eulogy for the hardworking spacecraft when the time comes.Tracking Earth systems from space An illustration of the NISAR satellite in orbit. Illustration: NASA In march, NASA’s NISAR satellite and that of the Indian Space Research Organization will be launched. NASA says NISAR will “scan nearly all the Earth’s land surfaces and ice twice every 12 day” to help scientists monitor changes in the planet’s terrain and understand climate change. NASA and ISRO will have a comprehensive view of the Earth’s systems by constantly monitoring its surface. The mission will operate for at least three years and orbit our planet some 464 miles (747 kilometers) above its surface.Debut of the Space Rider spaceplaneNASAAn artist’s concept of ESA’s Space Rider in orbit. ESA Illustration: A spaceplane about the size of a minivan will cruise Earth’s orbit and carry out science experiments under microgravity. Space Rider, a European Space Agency (ESA), is scheduled to launch its first unmanned test flight in late 2025. According to ESA , Space Rider will launch using a Vega C rocket and remain in orbit for about two months. It will land on Earth after its mission is complete, deliver the payloads and prepare for the next launch. The low Earth orbit vehicle is meant to provide ESA with routine access to space, transporting payloads to different orbital altitudes for a variety of applications. Spaceplanes are all the rage today. Launch vehicles are designed to operate like spacecraft in orbit, but can land on Earth just like an airplane. This allows for regular reusability and a fast turnaround between missions. First flight of Sierra Space’s Dream ChaserThe world’s first commercial space plane is ready to take off this year. We hope. Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser is planned for launch no earlier than May, with plans to fly to the International Space Station as part of a NASA contract.Artist’s impression of Dream Chaser. Image: Sierra Space Dream Chaser is set to launch from Earth on United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur Rocket (the spaceplane had originally been scheduled for launch in 2024, but schedule changes delayed its launch). The spaceplane’s foldable wings will fully unfold once it is in flight and generate power using solar arrays. The spaceplane is also equipped with heat-shield tiles that protect it from the scorching temperature of reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. It will then perform runway landings at the surface on its return. Colorado-based Sierra Space was awarded a NASA Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) contract in 2016, under which it is meant to provide at least seven uncrewed missions to the ISS to deliver cargo. Firefly on MoonAn image of the Blue Ghost mission at the surface of Moon. Credit: Firefly Aerospace. There is a special delivery on the Moon. As part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payloads Services, Firefly is preparing its Blue Ghost Lander to make a trip the Moon mid-January. The lander is expected to take 45 days after launch to reach the Moon. It will target a landing site in Mare Crisium – the ancient asteroid basin that later became filled with basaltic lava. Blue Ghost is packed with 10 science instruments to explore the Moon, and is designed to operate for one full lunar day (or the equivalent of 14 days on Earth).Texas-startup Firefly is meeting its end of a .3 million contract with NASA for its first lunar lander. Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and other companies launched their own lunar landers to the Moon as part of CLPS in 2024. But we were reminded how difficult it is to land on the dusty surface. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander was unable to reach the surface of the moon because it ran out of propellant. Intuitive Machines became the first private company to land on the surface of the Moon with its Odysseus lander, although it did end up tipped over on its side. ispace’s Resilience Moon lander Blue Ghost won’t be journeying to the Moon on its own, as another lunar lander will be coming along for the ride. Japanese startup ispace’s Resilience lander will ride on board the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that is set to launch Firefly’s lunar mission sometime in mid-January. The two landers are targeting different lunar mares. Resilience is expected to land in the Mare Frigoris region at the Moon’s northernmost regions if all goes according to plan. The lunar lander is carrying a small rover, named Tenacious, and is packed with several science instruments, mostly from Japan’s private space sector, that are designed to explore the lunar surface.January’s mission will mark ispace’s second attempt at landing on the lunar surface. Hakuto-R Mission 1 Lunar Lander (M1) slid towards the Moon in April 2023 and crashed onto its surface. Hakuto-R M1 was carrying both commercial and government-owned payloads, including a tiny, two-wheeled transformable robot from the Japanese space agency.Intuitive Machines heads back to the MoonIn February 2024, Intuitive Machines became the first commercial venture to land on the Moon with its Odysseus lander. After an eight-day trip through space, Intuitive Machines’ first mission delivered twelve payloads to the Malapert crater in the south pole region of the Moon. The IM-2 mission is set to launch in February, carrying a drill and a mass spectrometer to investigate the presence of ice water beneath the lunar surface.Intuitive Machines will use its NOVA-C landing platform under NASA’s CLPS initiative. Athena will aim to land at the Shackleton connecting Ridge, near Shackleton Crater, close to the South Pole. In addition to its drilling operations, the IM-2 mission will also test a Nokia LTE 4G communications system on the Moon. A new look at the Sun’s charged environment An artist’s impression of the IMAP mission in space. Illustration: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Princeton University/Steve Gribben NASA’s Interstellar Mapping Accumulation Probe (IMAP), packed with 10 instruments, will launch sometime in 2025. It is equipped with a magnetic bubble that surrounds the solar system known as the heliosphere. The IMAP mission is based at the L1 Lagrange Point, which is around 932,000 kilometers (1.5 million miles) away from Earth. The mission, originally planned to launch in 2024, has been repeatedly delayed. IMAP is not launching on its own–it’s carrying 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 critical refueling testSpaceX’s Starship made tremendous progress in 2024 with the company’s impressive catch of the oversized booster during the rocket’s fifth test flight. This year, SpaceX is ready to take it up a notch and attempt the daring refueling of Starship in orbit.An illustration of a Starship tanker transferring propellant to Starship HLS. Credit: SpaceX During an interview with Spaceflight Now, Kent Chojnacki, the deputy manager for NASA’s Human Landing System program, revealed that Starship’s in-flight propellant test may take place in March 2025. Two Starships will rendezvous in orbit and transfer fuel from one to the other. The rockets will launch four weeks apart, before docking and meeting in space to perform the first-of its-kind demonstration. SpaceX has a contract worth .2 million with NASA that will be signed in 2020. The contract is to use Starship tankers in orbit propellant transfer. Launch of Vast Space Haven-1 space stationThis California startup hopes to be the 1st company to launch a commercial spacestation into orbit. Vast Space is planning to launch Haven-1 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into low Earth orbit by August 2025. Vast, founded by Jed McCaleb and a crypto billionaire, is relatively new to the space industry. But it has big plans for a prized spot in Earth orbit. Vast is building a multi-module, 328-foot (100-meter) space station that will rotate to create artificial gravity. First light with the world’s largest digital cameraPhoto by Olivier Bonin/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The Vera Rubin Observatory will be the first project to light up in 2025. The first light of the Vera Rubin Observatory in 2025 will be a major project. The camera will collect data each night of 15 terabytes on the southern skies. This data will form part of Legacy Survey of Space and Time, a 10-year study of the constantly changing cosmos near and far. The data collected will total 60 petabytes. The first light is currently scheduled for July 4, 2025. The first light is scheduled for July 4, 2025. Axiom will launch astronauts from India to the station this time. Peggy Whitson will be the Ax-4 Commander. She is Axiom’s director of Human Spaceflight, and a former NASA Astronaut. Ax-1 was the first Axiom private mission to launch in April 2022. NASA admitted that it was a learning process and they have learned important lessons in regards to private space station mission. The space agency updated some of its rules to include a requirement for private astronauts that their missions be led by an ex-NASA astronaut. A vast survey of the galaxy’s stellar and galactic portfolioAn artists’ concept of SPHEREx orbiting Earth with the Milky Way disk in the background. Illustration: Caltech. In 2025 NASA will launch the Spectro-Photometer For The History of the Universe Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, or SPHEREx. The mission, which will last two years, will be a survey of the cosmos. It will include more than 450,000,000 galaxies in our solar system and 100,000,000 stars. Some of the light SPHEREx collects will be from over 10 billion light-years away.Researchers will use that data to create a 96-color sky map, making it the sky map with the most comprehensive color resolution. SPHEREx also identifies target objects to be observed by NASA’s Webb Space Telescope, the premier space-based observatory. Webb, often seen as Hubble’s successor, continues the legacy of deep space exploration, though Hubble remains operational.SPHEREx’s map of the universe will also help astronomers determine how galaxies emerged from the cosmic ether that preceded them and how water and organic molecules are distributed in stellar nurseries, where stars are born.It’s going to be another jam-packed year, and as these missions unfold, they’ll expand our understanding of the universe and place within it. As these missions unfold, they’ll expand our understanding of the universe and place within it.
Technology

Launches and First Lights were a huge part of our understanding of space and the industry at large. We must now turn our attention to the ambitious projects which are just getting started. This year, we highlight over a dozen ambitious projects that are poised to achieve major milestones. These missions will unfold over the next year and aim to give a complete picture of how spaceflight can benefit us. This is a great reminder that there are many different types of space research, but it’s all important and exciting. Without further ado, here’s your year ahead in space.Lucy’s flyby Illustration: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center The Lucy spacecraft–named for the remarkable fossil of the same name–launched into space in October 2021. Its mission? Lucy has travelled tens of millions of miles through space, visiting the unique Dinkinesh binary asteroid in January 2023. Lucy is scheduled to fly by the Trojan asteroid Donaldjohanson, a near-pass, on April 20, this year. The next asteroid flyby is not scheduled until 2027. This will be Lucy’s only asteroid pass of the year. This April flyby is a must-see for anyone interested in the asteroids and how they could explain the formation of the solar system and planets. NASA The year 2025 will be even more dramatic, as the Juno mission ends this year. The Juno mission is ending this year, so 2025 will be a very dramatic one. We’ll be sure to publish a eulogy for the hardworking spacecraft when the time comes.Tracking Earth systems from space An illustration of the NISAR satellite in orbit. Illustration: NASA In march, NASA’s NISAR satellite and that of the Indian Space Research Organization will be launched. NASA says NISAR will “scan nearly all the Earth’s land surfaces and ice twice every 12 day” to help scientists monitor changes in the planet’s terrain and understand climate change. NASA and ISRO will have a comprehensive view of the Earth’s systems by constantly monitoring its surface. The mission will operate for at least three years and orbit our planet some 464 miles (747 kilometers) above its surface.Debut of the Space Rider spaceplaneNASAAn artist’s concept of ESA’s Space Rider in orbit. ESA Illustration: A spaceplane about the size of a minivan will cruise Earth’s orbit and carry out science experiments under microgravity. Space Rider, a European Space Agency (ESA), is scheduled to launch its first unmanned test flight in late 2025. According to ESA , Space Rider will launch using a Vega C rocket and remain in orbit for about two months. It will land on Earth after its mission is complete, deliver the payloads and prepare for the next launch. The low Earth orbit vehicle is meant to provide ESA with routine access to space, transporting payloads to different orbital altitudes for a variety of applications. Spaceplanes are all the rage today. Launch vehicles are designed to operate like spacecraft in orbit, but can land on Earth just like an airplane. This allows for regular reusability and a fast turnaround between missions. First flight of Sierra Space’s Dream ChaserThe world’s first commercial space plane is ready to take off this year. We hope. Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser is planned for launch no earlier than May, with plans to fly to the International Space Station as part of a NASA contract.Artist’s impression of Dream Chaser. Image: Sierra Space Dream Chaser is set to launch from Earth on United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur Rocket (the spaceplane had originally been scheduled for launch in 2024, but schedule changes delayed its launch). The spaceplane’s foldable wings will fully unfold once it is in flight and generate power using solar arrays. The spaceplane is also equipped with heat-shield tiles that protect it from the scorching temperature of reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. It will then perform runway landings at the surface on its return. Colorado-based Sierra Space was awarded a NASA Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) contract in 2016, under which it is meant to provide at least seven uncrewed missions to the ISS to deliver cargo. Firefly on MoonAn image of the Blue Ghost mission at the surface of Moon. Credit: Firefly Aerospace. There is a special delivery on the Moon. As part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payloads Services, Firefly is preparing its Blue Ghost Lander to make a trip the Moon mid-January. The lander is expected to take 45 days after launch to reach the Moon. It will target a landing site in Mare Crisium – the ancient asteroid basin that later became filled with basaltic lava. Blue Ghost is packed with 10 science instruments to explore the Moon, and is designed to operate for one full lunar day (or the equivalent of 14 days on Earth).Texas-startup Firefly is meeting its end of a $93.3 million contract with NASA for its first lunar lander. Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and other companies launched their own lunar landers to the Moon as part of CLPS in 2024. But we were reminded how difficult it is to land on the dusty surface. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander was unable to reach the surface of the moon because it ran out of propellant. Intuitive Machines became the first private company to land on the surface of the Moon with its Odysseus lander, although it did end up tipped over on its side. ispace’s Resilience Moon lander Blue Ghost won’t be journeying to the Moon on its own, as another lunar lander will be coming along for the ride. Japanese startup ispace’s Resilience lander will ride on board the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that is set to launch Firefly’s lunar mission sometime in mid-January. The two landers are targeting different lunar mares. Resilience is expected to land in the Mare Frigoris region at the Moon’s northernmost regions if all goes according to plan. The lunar lander is carrying a small rover, named Tenacious, and is packed with several science instruments, mostly from Japan’s private space sector, that are designed to explore the lunar surface.January’s mission will mark ispace’s second attempt at landing on the lunar surface. Hakuto-R Mission 1 Lunar Lander (M1) slid towards the Moon in April 2023 and crashed onto its surface. Hakuto-R M1 was carrying both commercial and government-owned payloads, including a tiny, two-wheeled transformable robot from the Japanese space agency.Intuitive Machines heads back to the MoonIn February 2024, Intuitive Machines became the first commercial venture to land on the Moon with its Odysseus lander. After an eight-day trip through space, Intuitive Machines’ first mission delivered twelve payloads to the Malapert crater in the south pole region of the Moon. The IM-2 mission is set to launch in February, carrying a drill and a mass spectrometer to investigate the presence of ice water beneath the lunar surface.Intuitive Machines will use its NOVA-C landing platform under NASA’s CLPS initiative. Athena will aim to land at the Shackleton connecting Ridge, near Shackleton Crater, close to the South Pole. In addition to its drilling operations, the IM-2 mission will also test a Nokia LTE 4G communications system on the Moon. A new look at the Sun’s charged environment An artist’s impression of the IMAP mission in space. Illustration: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Princeton University/Steve Gribben NASA’s Interstellar Mapping Accumulation Probe (IMAP), packed with 10 instruments, will launch sometime in 2025. It is equipped with a magnetic bubble that surrounds the solar system known as the heliosphere. The IMAP mission is based at the L1 Lagrange Point, which is around 932,000 kilometers (1.5 million miles) away from Earth. The mission, originally planned to launch in 2024, has been repeatedly delayed. IMAP is not launching on its own–it’s carrying 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 critical refueling testSpaceX’s Starship made tremendous progress in 2024 with the company’s impressive catch of the oversized booster during the rocket’s fifth test flight. This year, SpaceX is ready to take it up a notch and attempt the daring refueling of Starship in orbit.An illustration of a Starship tanker transferring propellant to Starship HLS. Credit: SpaceX During an interview with Spaceflight Now, Kent Chojnacki, the deputy manager for NASA’s Human Landing System program, revealed that Starship’s in-flight propellant test may take place in March 2025. Two Starships will rendezvous in orbit and transfer fuel from one to the other. The rockets will launch four weeks apart, before docking and meeting in space to perform the first-of its-kind demonstration. SpaceX has a contract worth $53.2 million with NASA that will be signed in 2020. The contract is to use Starship tankers in orbit propellant transfer. Launch of Vast Space Haven-1 space stationThis California startup hopes to be the 1st company to launch a commercial spacestation into orbit. Vast Space is planning to launch Haven-1 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into low Earth orbit by August 2025. Vast, founded by Jed McCaleb and a crypto billionaire, is relatively new to the space industry. But it has big plans for a prized spot in Earth orbit. Vast is building a multi-module, 328-foot (100-meter) space station that will rotate to create artificial gravity. First light with the world’s largest digital cameraPhoto by Olivier Bonin/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The Vera Rubin Observatory will be the first project to light up in 2025. The first light of the Vera Rubin Observatory in 2025 will be a major project. The camera will collect data each night of 15 terabytes on the southern skies. This data will form part of Legacy Survey of Space and Time, a 10-year study of the constantly changing cosmos near and far. The data collected will total 60 petabytes. The first light is currently scheduled for July 4, 2025. The first light is scheduled for July 4, 2025. Axiom will launch astronauts from India to the station this time. Peggy Whitson will be the Ax-4 Commander. She is Axiom’s director of Human Spaceflight, and a former NASA Astronaut. Ax-1 was the first Axiom private mission to launch in April 2022. NASA admitted that it was a learning process and they have learned important lessons in regards to private space station mission. The space agency updated some of its rules to include a requirement for private astronauts that their missions be led by an ex-NASA astronaut. A vast survey of the galaxy’s stellar and galactic portfolioAn artists’ concept of SPHEREx orbiting Earth with the Milky Way disk in the background. Illustration: Caltech. In 2025 NASA will launch the Spectro-Photometer For The History of the Universe Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, or SPHEREx. The mission, which will last two years, will be a survey of the cosmos. It will include more than 450,000,000 galaxies in our solar system and 100,000,000 stars. Some of the light SPHEREx collects will be from over 10 billion light-years away.Researchers will use that data to create a 96-color sky map, making it the sky map with the most comprehensive color resolution. SPHEREx also identifies target objects to be observed by NASA’s Webb Space Telescope, the premier space-based observatory. Webb, often seen as Hubble’s successor, continues the legacy of deep space exploration, though Hubble remains operational.SPHEREx’s map of the universe will also help astronomers determine how galaxies emerged from the cosmic ether that preceded them and how water and organic molecules are distributed in stellar nurseries, where stars are born.It’s going to be another jam-packed year, and as these missions unfold, they’ll expand our understanding of the universe and place within it. As these missions unfold, they’ll expand our understanding of the universe and place within it.

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