The most exciting space missions of 2025

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2024 has come to a close, and it was another big year for spaceflight. In a roundup of the year, we highlighted several key missions. 

SpaceX’s Starship booster catch will go down as a historic milestone due to the incredible engineering behind the achievement. The Polaris Dawn mission also moved human spaceflight forward with the first private spacewalk in history. China, meanwhile, collected the first-ever lunar soil sample from the far side of the Moon.

Now, though, we’re looking ahead to the biggest space missions of 2025.

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AEROSPACE ENGINEERING SPOTLIGHT

The biggest upcoming space missions of 2025

Here are five of the biggest missions to look out for in 2025. Stay up to date with Interesting Engineering and Aerospace throughout the year to get more information on all of these, and much more.

A new private space station

As the era of the International Space Station nears its end, several private space companies are working to build a fleet of stations in collaboration with NASA. 

One of those, Haven-1, is scheduled to fly to orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket in August. Haven-1 will be capable of hosting four people in orbit for up to 30 days. It will be a testbed for the next iteration, Haven-2, which will be a larger modular space station.

Tianwen-2: China’s asteroid rendezvous

Last year, China collected lunar soil samples from the far side of the moon in a historic first. This year, the country’s space program aims to pull off its first asteroid sampling mission. 

Tianwen-2 is expected to launch in May aboard a Long March 3B rocket. The mission will fly to the near-Earth asteroid Kamo'oalewa to collect samples.

Moon missions galore

2025 will be another year of lunar lander missions. Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander is scheduled to launch from Florida in mid-January atop a Falcon 9 rocket. That lander will aim to touch down on the Mare Crisium impact basin.

The same Falcon 9 rocket will also fire Japanese firm iSpace’s Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander to orbit. Those are just two of the many lunar lander missions planned for this year.

Starliner astronauts to finally return home

Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have been stationed on the ISS since they flew up to the orbital outpost aboard Boeing’s first crewed Starliner mission. They were originally only supposed to spend a few days aboard the ISS, but they will have been in space for about nine months by the time they return to Earth.

Starship in-orbit refuel

It will be hard for SpaceX to top that booster catch maneuver this year. However, they have another very impressive milestone test due this year. 

To reach the Moon, Mars, and beyond, Starship must fly to orbit and attach to another Starship to refuel. This will allow it to have enough fuel to continue on to its final destination. This year, SpaceX plans to perform an in-orbit refuel test to verify the technology behind the refueling process.

AERO BULLETIN

Everything we know about the Jeju Air crash

Tragically, the holiday period saw the worst air disaster in the history of South Korea. On Sunday, Dec 29, a Jeju Air plane crashed at the country’s Muan International Airport.

The incident occurred just minutes after a traffic control tower at the airport issued a bird strike warning for the pilot. Unfortunately, the Jeju Air plane was completely wrecked during the incident. Experts have weighed in, suggesting a bird strike alone would not typically cause such a crash. A thorough investigation is underway. Here is everything we know so far.

A tragic incident

The Jeju Air incident has shocked the world. South Korea has a strong safety record when it comes to public air transport. 

Unfortunately, this incident will go down as the worst in the country’s history. The crash killed 179 people, with only two survivors – two flight attendants – rescued from the wreckage.

Did a bird strike cause the incident?

Before the incident, the airport’s traffic control tower issued a fairly routine bird strike warning – the airport is located near a bird sanctuary. 

Two minutes after the strike, the flight pilot sent a radio message saying: “Mayday, mayday, mayday, bird strike, bird strike, going around.” The aircraft turned around and was allowed to attempt a landing in the wrong direction. 

Why wasn’t the plane’s landing gear down?

However, when the Jeju Air plane touched down, its landing gear was up, causing the plane to skid along the runway. The reason why is not yet known, but this seems unrelated to the bird strike.

The landing gear is also controlled by a hydraulic control system, which operates independently of the engines. Airliners also have a manual override system that allows the landing gear to be deployed in the event of an electronic or mechanical failure. 

Experts question concrete wall placement

The determining factor in the disaster is likely to have been the placement of a concrete wall roughly 250m (820ft) from the end of the runway. The plane skidded into the wall and burst into flames, killing almost everyone onboard.

Air safety expert David Learmount told the BBC that, had the "obstruction" not been there, the plane "would have come to rest with most – possibly all – those on board still alive".

Much is still not known about the reasons behind the incident. However, South Korean law officials have transferred data from the Jeju Air plane’s damaged black boxes. The investigation into the disaster will likely go on for months.