Launches, First Lights, Flybys, and More

2024 was s huge year for our understanding of the cosmos and the spaceflight industry writ large. But out with the old, in with the new, so we must turn our heads towards the ambitious projects that are getting off the ground (ha!) this year.

For your reading pleasure we’re highlighting over a dozen projects poised to hit major landmarks this year. Taken together, these missions, unfolding over the next 12 months, aim to paint a more complete picture of what we stand to gain from spaceflight and astronomical research. It’s a reminder that space research comes in many shapes and sizes, but all of what’s set to happen is important—and very exciting. Without further ado, here’s your year ahead in space.

Lucy’s flyby

The Lucy spacecraft—named for the remarkable fossil of the same name—launched into space in October 2021. Its charge? Investigating the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, a population of space rocks that have never been explored up close. Lucy has since travelled tens of millions of miles through space, visiting the unique Dinkinesh binary asteroid in January 2023.

This year, Lucy will make a flyby—a near pass—of the Trojan asteroid Donaldjohanson on April 20. This will be the spacecraft’s only asteroid flyby of the year, with the next one not scheduled until August 2027. If you’re interested in asteroids that could help explain how the planets and the solar system took shape, I’d buckle in for this April flyby.

Juno’s farewell

The Juno spacecraft had an incredibly busy 2024, a year in which the spacecraft took close-up images of Jupiter’s moons, including the most volcanically active body in the solar system, and collected data that helped NASA scientists identify a lava lake on that body’s surface. 2025 will be even more climactic, as the Juno mission will end this year.

The mission will conclude with the spacecraft plummeting into Jupiter on September 15, marking the end of the 14-year mission. We’ll be sure to publish a eulogy for the hardworking spacecraft when the time comes.

Tracking Earth systems from space

In March, NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)’s NISAR satellite will launch. NISAR “will scan nearly all of Earth’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days,” according to NASA, helping scientists monitor shifts in the planet’s surface and better understand the evolving impacts of climate change. Constantly monitoring Earth’s surface from space will give NASA and ISRO a sweeping view of our planet’s systems. 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 spaceplane

A spaceplane the size of two minivans is set to cruise through Earth’s orbit, carrying out science experiments in the microgravity environment. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Rider is set to launch for its first uncrewed test flight sometime in late 2025.

Space Rider will launch on a Vega-C rocket, and stay in orbit for around two months, according to ESA. After it wraps up its mission, it will return to land on Earth, deliver its payloads, and prepare for its 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. The launch vehicles operate in orbit like a spacecraft, but are built to land on Earth similarly to an airplane. This allows for regular reusability and a fast turnaround between missions.

First flight of Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser

The world’s first commercial space plane is ready to take off this year. At least 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.

Dream Chaser will launch from Earth atop United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket (the spaceplane was originally scheduled for liftoff in 2024 but changes to the rocket’s schedule delayed its launch). The partially reusable vehicle is designed with foldable wings that fully unfurl once the spaceplane is in flight, generating power through solar arrays. It’s also equipped with heat shield tiles to protect it from the scorching temperatures of reentry through Earth’s atmosphere, after which it will perform runway landings on the surface upon 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 the Moon

There’s a special delivery to the Moon. Space startups are fashioning landers equipped to drop off payloads to the lunar surface on a more regular basis, preparing for humanity’s attempt to sustain a longtime presence on the Moon.

As part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payloads Services (CLPS), Firefly Aerospace is prepping its Blue Ghost lander for a trip to the Moon in mid-January. After launching, the lander will take around 45 days to reach the Moon, targeting a landing spot in Mare Crisium, the site of an ancient asteroid impact basin that was later 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. As part of CLPS, two other companies, Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, launched their own lunar landers to the Moon in 2024, but we were reminded that landing on the dusty surface is no easy feat. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander lost propellant at a critical rate, preventing any chance of it reaching the lunar surface. 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. If all goes well, Resilience will land in a region called Mare Frigoris located at the Moon’s far northern regions. 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. In April 2023, the Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) Lunar Lander plummeted towards the Moon and crashed on 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 Moon

In February 2024, Intuitive Machines became the first commercial venture to land on the Moon with its Odysseus lander. The company’s first mission delivered 12 payloads near the Malapert A crater at the Moon’s south pole region following an eight-day journey through space.

This year, the Houston-based company is hoping to double on its success with the Athena lander. 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. The Athena lander will target a touchdown 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

NASA’s Interstellar Mapping Acceleration Probe (IMAP) is launching sometime in late 2025, packed with 10 instruments to explore the magnetic bubble surrounding the solar system, known as the heliosphere. The IMAP mission will operate from the L1 Lagrange point, an area around 932,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. From its orbital perch, the spacecraft is designed to map out the heliosphere, observing the wide range of particles in interplanetary space and the interaction of solar wind with material in the Milky Way.

The mission was originally scheduled to launch in 2024 but has been delayed several times. 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 test

SpaceX’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.

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. The test entails two Starships rendezvousing in orbit, with one transferring fuel to the other. The two rockets will launch around four weeks apart before meeting and docking in space for the first-of-its-kind demonstration. 

SpaceX is under a $53.2 million contract with NASA, signed in 2020, to use Starship tankers for in-orbit propellant transfer. Using in-flight refueling, NASA aims to develop technologies that are essential for establishing a sustainable presence on the Moon and sending crewed missions to Mars.

Launch of Vast Space’s Haven-1 space station

This year, a California-based startup wants to be the first company to fly a commercial space station to orbit. Vast is planning to launch Haven-1 on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to low Earth orbit no earlier than August 2025. Vast is a relative newcomer to the space industry, founded by crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb, but it’s already got big plans to take over a coveted spot in Earth orbit. 

Vast wants to build a 328-foot-long (100 meters) multi-module space station in orbit, which will spin to produce artificial gravity. Following the deployment of its first module, Haven-1, the company wants to send a four-person crew to the space station on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, where they will spend up to 30 days in orbit.

First light featuring the world’s biggest digital camera

One of the biggest projects to look forward to in 2025 is the Vera Rubin Observatory’s first light. The observatory’s state-of-the-art 3.2-gigapixel (or 3.2-billion-pixel) camera has been in the works for years, and is the centerpiece of the observatory. Each night, the camera will collect 15 terabytes of data on the southern sky. That data will be part of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (or LSST), a 10-year survey of the ever-changing cosmos both near and very, very far. All told, 60 petabytes of data will be collected on the evolution of the universe and all that comprises it.

Regarding the Milky Way specifically, LSST will capture the motion of millions of stars in the galaxy, creating a map of the celestial objects over 1,000 times the volume of past surveys. You can see updates on the observatory’s development here. First light is currently slated for July 4, 2025.

Axiom Mission 4

Axiom Space expects to fly its fourth mission to the ISS in spring 2025, transporting a crew of four astronauts to low Earth orbit.

The company has so far dominated commercial trips to the space station, previously sending three private crews to the ISS. This time around, Axiom is launching astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary to the space station. Peggy Whitson, who is Axiom Space’s director of human spaceflight and a former NASA astronaut, will serve as the Ax-4 commander. The first private mission by Axiom, Ax-1, launched to the ISS in April 2022. It was a learning experience, and NASA admitted to having learned some important lessons when it comes to private space station missions. As a result, the space agency updated a few of its rules for future private astronauts, including a requirement that the missions would be led by a former NASA astronaut.

A vast survey of the universe’s galactic and stellar portfolio

In February 2025, NASA will launch the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer—in short, SPHEREx. The two-year mission will survey the cosmos—more than 450 million galaxies and 100 million stars in our own solar system in optical and near-infrared light. 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 will also identify target objects for detailed follow-up observations by telescopes, including the Webb Space Telescope—NASA’s 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. Each launch, landing, observation—and even failure—brings us close to answering some of the biggest questions in science.