Overview
Exploration of the Solar System
On 18 February, ESA's Solar Orbiter left the orbital plane of the solar system after successfully completing its 4th Venus flyby, tilting its orbit to 17°. [3] [4] [5] The mission's first images and videos of the Sun's south pole were taken in March and then released on 11 June. These are the first images of the Sun's poles taken from outside the ecliptic plane. [6] [7]
AstroForge's Brokkr-2 was launched on 27 February to perform a flyby of a near-Earth asteroid and determine if the asteroid is metallic. [8] The mission failed because of communication issues. [9] [10]
China launched the Tianwen-2 (ZhengHe) asteroid sample-return and comet probe on 28 May. [11] It will rendezvous with near-Earth asteroid 469219 Kamo'oalewa in mid-2026, attempt to collect samples, and return samples back to Earth in late 2027. Then it will travel to main-belt comet 311P/PANSTARRS for a decade-long mission to further explore the mysterious comet-like object. [12]
NASA's twin ESCAPADE spacecraft were launched on 13 November on New Glenn with the aim of investigating the effects of the solar wind on the Martian atmosphere. [13] The two spacecraft were launched on an innovative trajectory where they stay in a staging orbit around the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2 until late 2026 when the Mars transfer window opens. [14]
Multiple American, Chinese, and European interplanetary spacecraft attempted observing the third known interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, which had its closest approach to the Sun in 2025. [15] [16] [17] [18] The observations by ESA's Trace Gas Orbiter were used to predict the object's path, resulting in a substantial increase in accuracy. This was the first time that astrometric data from a spacecraft at another planet have been accepted in the Minor Planet Center's database. [19] [20] [21]
Lunar exploration
On 15 January, Blue Ghost Mission 1 by Firefly Aerospace and Hakuto-R Mission 2 by ispace launched together on a Falcon 9.
Firefly Aerospace's lunar lander carried NASA-sponsored experiments and commercial payloads as a part of Commercial Lunar Payload Services program to Mare Crisium. [22] Landing was completed successfully on 2 March 2025. [23] The mission exceeded expectations by transmitting over 110 GB of scientific and imaging data, including high‐definition views of the lunar horizon glow and an eclipse, far surpassing previous CLPS mission data yields. [24]
Epic Aerospace's Chimera-1 Space tug was planned to transition from TLI to Geosynchronous but failed due to a possible communication failure. [25] [26]
On 5 June, Hakuto-R Mission 2, carrying the RESILIENCE lunar lander and the TENACIOUS micro rover, attempted a landing in Mare Frigoris but crashed into the lunar surface. [27] [28] [29]
Intuitive Machines's lunar lander IM-2, carrying NASA-sponsored experiments and commercial rovers (Yaoki, AstroAnt, Micro-Nova and MAPP LV1) and payloads as a part of Commercial Lunar Payload Services program to Mons Mouton, was launched on 27 February 2025 on a Falcon 9 launch vehicle with Brokkr-2 and Lunar Trailblazer. IM-2 landed on 6 March 2025. The spacecraft was intact after touchdown but resting on its side, thereby complicating its planned science and technology demonstration mission; this outcome is similar to what occurred with the company's IM-1 Odysseus spacecraft in 2024. [30]
Lunar Trailblazer aimed to aid in the understanding of lunar water and the Moon's water cycle. The mission failed as contact was never established with spacecraft after launch. [31]
Human spaceflight
On 30 January, Sunita Williams broke the world record for the most time spent on spacewalk by a woman when she accumulated 62 hours and 6 minutes on her ninth EVA. The record was previously held by Peggy Whitson with 60 hours and 21 minutes. [32]
On 1 April at 01:46 (UTC) [b] , Fram2 launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, becoming the first crewed spaceflight to enter a polar retrograde orbit, [33] i.e., to fly over Earth's poles. [34]
The Axiom Mission 4 to the ISS (25 June to 15 July), which debuted the newest Crew Dragon capsule Grace , carried a four-person crew including commander Peggy Whitson, pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of ISRO, and mission specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, an ESA project astronaut from Poland, and Tibor Kapu, representing the Hungarian Space Office. [35] For India, this was the first human spaceflight mission under the Gaganyyan program. For India, Poland, and Hungary, this was their second human spaceflight after their first astronauts participated in the Interkosmos program in the 1970s and 1980s. [36] [37]
In September, Northrop Grumman debuted the newest version of its uncrewed resupply spacecraft, Cygnus XL, with increased payload capacity and pressurized volume. [38] [39]
Japan debuted its new resupply spacecraft, HTV-X, that flew aboard H3 on 26 October 2025 (HTV-X1) [40] and successfully arrived at ISS on 29 October 2025. [41]
The Chinese crewed spacecraft Shenzhou 20 was expected to return to Earth in early November 2025 after the arrival of the Shenzhou 21 crew to the Tiangong space station. However, due to suspected space debris damage, the return of Shenzhou 20 has been delayed indefinitely, and the Shenzhou 20 crew returned to Earth on 14 November using the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft instead. [42] On 25 November, China launched the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft without crew to serve as a replacement return craft for the Shenzhou 21 crew. [43]
The Russian Soyuz MS vehicle No. 759, planned for the Soyuz MS-28 mission, was damaged during testing. Roscosmos replaced it with the vehicle No. 753, previously intended for commercial missions which had been cancelled following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. [44] [45] During the launch of Soyuz MS-28 to ISS on 27 November, [46] the Site 31 launch complex at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Russia's only launch site for flights to the ISS, sustained substantial damage. [47] [48] [49]
Following the reberthing of Cygnus NG-23 to Unity module on 1 December 2025, for the first time, all eight International Space Station docking ports were occupied. It was held on Canadarm2 away from its docking port on 24 November 2025, as its position would otherwise interfere with the approach corridor for Soyuz MS-28 at the Rassvet nadir docking port. The space station currently hosts: SpaceX Dragon 2s (Crew-12 and CRS-33), Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL (NG-23), JAXA’s HTV-X 1, Roscosmos' Soyuz MS (MS-27 and MS-28), Progress MS (MS-31 and MS-32) spacecrafts. Alongside all the three docking ports of Tiangong Space Station were occupied by Shenzhou spacecraft (20 and 22) and Tianzhou 9 spacecrafts. [50] [51]
Rocket innovation
Blue Origin completed the maiden flight of its New Glenn rocket on 16 January 2025. The second stage successfully placed its payload into orbit, while the first stage failed to land on the recovery ship offshore. [52] On its second flight on 13 November, the first stage "Never Tell Me The Odds" landed on the Jacklyn drone ship, making it the first non-SpaceX orbital-class booster to successfully land propulsively. [53]
SpaceX expected to perform an in-space propellant transfer demonstration using two docked Starships in 2025—a critical milestone that would allow SpaceX to refuel their Starship HLS vehicle for an uncrewed lunar landing demonstration. [54] The propellant transfer demonstration mission was later postponed to 2026 as SpaceX suffered a number of setbacks with its Starship program in 2025 and haven't achieved a single orbital flight of the vehicle. [55] [56] [57] [58]
Satellite technology
ISRO successfully completed the docking of two SpaDeX satellites (SDX-01 & SDX-02) in the early hours of 16 January 2025. [59] Docking of two vehicles in space has previously only been achieved by the Soviet Union/Russia, United States, ESA, and China.
Kuiper Systems, Amazon's satellite internet subsidiary, has started initial launches. It plans a constellation of over 3,000 satellites. The launches will occur on Atlas V, Falcon 9, Vulcan Centaur, Ariane 6 and New Glenn launch vehicles. [60]
Guowang, a Chinese satellite internet constellation, has started regular launches. [61] A constellation of over 13,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit is expected by the project's end. [62]
NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), a joint project between NASA and ISRO to co-develop and launch a dual-frequency synthetic aperture radar satellite that is used for remote sensing was launched on 30 July 2025. It is notable for being the first dual-band radar imaging satellite. [63]
ESA launched four new missions for the EU's Earth observation programme Copernicus. The atmosphere-monitoring Sentinel-4A and Sentinel-5A launched in July and August aboard other European satellites in a two-missions-one-satellite approach, [64] [65] [66] while the radar missions Sentinel-1D and Sentinel-6B launched as standalone spacecraft in November. [67] [68] ESA also launched two new Earth observation satellite missions of its FutureEO programme, the radar-equipped Earth Explorer 7 Biomass for monitoring carbon storage in forests [69] and a pair of HydroGNSS satellites for GNSS reflectometry, the first Scout-type mission of the programme. Furthermore, the ESA-supported Earth observation constellations AIX, HiVE, and IRIDE launched their first satellites in 2025. [70] [71] [72] [73]
