 "Big rockets, a big telescope and big changes in space await in 2025")
By Michael Roston & Katrina Miller
Our species called this latest 366-day journey around the sun “2024” and packed into it a ton of astronomical and spaceflight excitement.
A solar eclipse crossed North America. Two robotic landers reached the lunar surface, largely intact. The most powerful rocket booster ever built was caught by a pair of mechanical arms nicknamed “chopsticks.” A journey began to Jupiter’s icy ocean moon Europa. And private astronauts conducted a daring spacewalk.
Can this revolution around the sun we name “2025” compare? We’ll let you be the judge of how enthusiastic to get about the events you can expect on the launchpads and in the night sky.
Jeff Bezos enters the arena
Through SpaceX, Elon Musk has dominated spaceflight around the planet in recent years. But the extraplanetary ambitions of the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos could present a challenge to Musk soon.
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The space company started by Bezos, Blue Origin, has a powerful rocket called New Glenn that may at last get off the ground in 2025. Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the booster stage is designed to be fully reusable so it can fly again and again and reduce the cost of launches. The rocket could launch national security satellites for the US military and spacecraft for NASA, including orbiters to Mars and moon landers. Another thing New Glenn will carry is satellites for Amazon, where Bezos is still executive chair. The company’s Project Kuiper involves plans to build a mega-constellation of satellites beaming internet down from space, in competition with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.
Rubin’s first light
Formerly the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, the observatory was renamed in 2020 to honor Vera Rubin, who died at 88 in 2016. Dr. Rubin’s work persuaded astronomers of the existence of dark matter, which makes up a vast majority of mass in the universe, but no one knows what it is.
The name is fitting. With the largest digital camera in the world, scientists will use the Rubin Observatory to create a time-lapse motion picture of the Southern sky. Such images would help researchers understand the nature of dark matter, as well as dark energy, the unknown force pushing the cosmos apart.
The moon, and Trump, come back around
During the first administration of Donald J. Trump, American space policy refocused on lunar exploration. President Biden’s administration sustained that direction. But as Trump returns to the White House in January, the country’s existing space plans could be upended by cancelling the expensive rocket NASA has been developing for more than a decade. Alternatively, Trump could more radically shift NASA’s focus to sending people to Mars. Getting to the Red Planet is the primary goal of Musk, who has been advising the president-elect.
For all that potential uncertainty, a series of robotic space missions are planned to the moon early in the year. The first two, a pair of landers from the American company Firefly Aerospace and the Japanese company Ispace, will launch on the same SpaceX rocket as soon as mid-January. The mission by Firefly will be the first trip of its Blue Ghost lander and will carry cargo paid for by NASA. The lunar trip by Ispace will be its second attempt after the company’s first lander crashed into the moon’s surface in 2023.
Later in the year’s first quarter, Intuitive Machines may try to put another robotic lander on the moon after the company’s Odysseus lander reached the surface intact, but tilted over, last February. The company’s second lander, named Athena, also will carry NASA-financed instruments, including a drill that will try to find samples of ice. Athena will share a SpaceX launcher with Lunar Trailblazer, a NASA orbiter that will study water on the moon.
India’s orbital objective
India’s space program has landed a robot on the moon and put a spacecraft into orbit around Mars. The country’s most immediate priorities are much closer to Earth, but that doesn’t mean they are less ambitious.
India is focusing on human spaceflight. A member of the nation’s astronaut corps, Shubhanshu Shukla, is to spend up to 14 days this spring aboard the International Space Station during a commercial mission with the company Axiom Space.
Shukla and his fellow Indian astronauts are hoping to be the first to launch to low Earth orbit on its homegrown rockets. India said in December that an orbital vehicle from that program, known as Gaganyaan, was being prepared for a test launch with no astronauts aboard. A successful flight could lead the way to a crewed Indian astronaut launch as early as 2026.
New milestones and new spacecraft
SpaceX wowed the world in November during Flight 5 of Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built. Expect the company to try to repeat the stunning “chopsticks” catch of its massive Super Heavy booster. SpaceX may also attempt to catch the upper-stage Starship vehicle after it completes an orbit of Earth and returns to the launch site in South Texas for the first time. SpaceX said it was aiming for 25 launches of Starship in 2025 as it prepares the spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon under the company’s contract with NASA.
Other new rockets and spacecraft may take flight in 2025.
One is Neutron, a reusable rocket being developed by Rocket Lab, which was founded in New Zealand. Another is Dream Chaser, a space plane built by Sierra Space. After delays in 2024, the company hopes it will carry cargo to the ISS for the first time this year.