Look to the Sky: Here’s Every Major US Space Launch Scheduled in 2025

Look to the Sky: Here’s Every Major US Space Launch Scheduled in 2025

Two major space launches in two days got 2025 off to a rousing start. The Blue Ghost lunar lander is on its way to the moon, and just one day after it left Earth, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company launched its big rocket, called New Glenn, its name honoring US space legend John Glenn.

Space agencies from around the world launched a total of 244 successful missions into orbit or space in 2024, which is the most in history. The US led the way with over half of those launches. And dozens of space launches are already planned for 2025, following Blue Ghost and New Glenn.

Feel like watching a liftoff? Many of them will likely be streamed by NASA or from the YouTube channels of individual companies like SpaceX. Space launches are finicky, and the dates often change with little warning. But if you’re looking to keep an eye on the sky in 2025, the list below should help.

January

The Blue Ghost lunar lander is seen.

The Blue Ghost moon lander is seen at Firefly Aerospace headquarters in Cedar Park, Texas, in December 2024.

Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images

Blue Ghost Lunar Lander Mission 1 & Hakuto-R M2 Resilience

From talking fridges to iPhones, our experts are here to help make the world a little less complicated.

Launch date: Launched successfully on Jan. 15
Organization:
SpaceX / NASA / Firefly Aerospace
Launch site: Kennedy Space Center, FL
Rocket: SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5

This uncrewed mission, which launched on Jan. 15, will carry Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander to the moon, along with a payload of 10 NASA instruments designed to measure various metrics on the lunar surface, including position and navigation data, regolith behavior and Earth’s magnetosphere.

New Glenn’s Inaugural Launch

Launch date: Launched successfully on Jan. 16
Organization:
Blue Origin / NASA
Rocket: Blue Origin New Glenn
Launch site: Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, FL

Blue Origin’s first test flight of its New Glenn rocket was originally scheduled for Jan. 13. However, a vehicle subsystem issue sprung up that would’ve taken too long to troubleshoot on the launch pad, so Blue Origin rescheduled the launch, and it successfully reached orbit on Jan. 16. In addition to the inaugural launch, the payload included Blue Ring Pathfinder, which was set to demonstrate its ability to communicate from orbit to ground.

Read more: New Glenn Rocket Launch Marks a Big Moment for Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin

From talking fridges to iPhones, our experts are here to help make the world a little less complicated.

February

Lunar Trailblazer & Nova-C IM-2

Launch date: Feb. 27
Organization: SpaceX / NASA / Intuitive Machines
Rocket: SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5
Launch site: Kennedy Space Center, FL

This mission will take the Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander to the moon for its second mission. The trip will also include NASA’s PRIME-1 payloadwhich will be drilling into the moon and using a mass spectrometer to analyze materials beneath the surface.

SPHEREx & PUNCH

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon spacecraft atop it

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon spacecraft atop takes off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in October 2022 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Launch date: Feb. 25
Organization:
SpaceX / NASA
Rocket: SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5
Launch site: Vandenberg SFB, CA

SpaceX is set to send its Falcon 9 to the moon with NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH. SPHEREx is a two-year mission that will launch a satellite capable of detecting near-infrared light and optical light to gather data. PUNCH is four suitcase-sized satellites that will monitor the Sun’s corona to detect coronal mass ejections to eventually be able to predict when they’ll happen.

March

Crew-10

Launch date: March 25
Organization: SpaceX / NASA / ROSCOSMOS / JAXA
Rocket: SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5
Launch site: Cape Canaveral SFS, FL

A crewed flight to the International Space Station will include American astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Russian astronaut Kirill Peskov and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi. Once they arrive at the ISS, Crew-9, along with Starliner astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, will make its way back to Earth.

Project Kuiper (Vulcan #1 and Vulcan #2)

amazon-kuiper-gettyimages-1247992419

Project Kuiper is a subsidiary of Amazon with big launch plans.

NurPhoto/Getty Images

Launch date: TBA
Organization: United Launch Alliance / Kuiper Systems (Amazon)
Rocket: Vulcan VC6L and Atlas V 551
Launch site: Cape Canaveral SFS, FL

The first two Project Kuiper launches are scheduled for March 2025. Kuiper Systems is a subsidiary of Amazon and plans to launch a total of 3,276 satellites into orbit for broadband internet access to compete with the likes of SpaceX. There will be a number of these going up throughout 2025 and beyond, but this project is slated to start in March 2025.

Blue Moon Pathfinder

Launch date: TBA
Organization: Blue Origin
Rocket:
Blue Origin New Glenn
Launch site: Cape Canaveral SFS, FL

Blue Origin will finally begin testing on its Blue Moon Pathfinder MK1 lunar lander. It isn’t going to the moon yet, but Blue Origin launches always get plenty of press before they go up. Eventually, Blue Origin wants to use the Pathfinder to take supplies to the moon.

Fram2

Exact date: TBA
Organization:
SpaceX
Rocket: Falcon 9 Block 5
Launch site: Cape Canaveral SFS, FL

The Fram2 mission is a crewed mission that will take five passengers around Earth’s polar caps. Over the five-day mission, the crew will conduct the first-ever human x-ray while in space along with more research on how spaceflight affects the human body. They will also study STEVE, or Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancementwhich is a ribbon of hot gases that light up the night sky similar to aurora borealis. The crew will consist of Chun Wang, Jannicke Mikkelsen, Eric Philips and Rabea Rogge.

April

Axiom Space Mission 4

Exact date: TBA
Organization: SpaceX / Axiom Space
Rocket: Falcon 9 Block 5
Launch site: Cape Canaveral SFS, FL

The Axiom Space Mission 4 will send four people to the International Space Station where they’ll stay for a little over a week. The crew includes retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, Polish engineer Sławosz Uznański and Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu.

May

EWS OD-1

Exact date: TBA
Organization:
Northrop Grumman Space Systems
Rocket: Minotaur IV
Launch site: Vandenberg SFB, CA

The EWS OD-1 mission will deploy the Electro-Optical/Infrared Weather System into low Earth orbit as a tech demonstration, allowing various branches of the US military to evaluate its performance as a weather satellite for the Department of Defense.

June

USSF-106

Exact date: TBA
Organization: United Launch Alliance
Rocket: Vulcan VC4S
Launch site: Cape Canaveral SFS, FL

This is a mission for the United States Space Force. It’ll deploy the NTS-3 navigation satellite along with NASA’s SunRISE mini-satelliteswhich will study solar activity. Other payloads are planned for this launch but haven’t been announced yet.

EscaPADE

Blue Origin Aerospace Manufacturer building in Cape Canaveral, Florida

One of Blue Origin’s biggest launches of the year is planned for June.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Exact date: TBA
Organization: Blue Origin / NASA
Rocket: New Glenn
Launch site: Cape Canaveral SFS, FL

The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE) mission is a joint venture between Blue Origin and NASA that will send science tools to Mars to study our red neighbor. The instruments will study the solar wind energy transfer through Mars’ magnetosphere. It’s one of Blue Origin’s biggest launches of the year.

July

Crew-11

Exact date: TBA
Organization: SpaceX / NASA
Rocket: Falcon 9 Block 5
Launch site: Cape Canaveral SFS, FL

The Crew-11 flight will take four more astronauts to the ISS in July 2025. For now, the exact launch date hasn’t been set in stone and neither has the crew. However, it’ll be just like the Crew-10 launch, where four astronauts will go to the ISS to conduct study and relieve the prior crew.

September

STP-S29A

Exact date: TBA
Organization:
Northrop Grumman Space Systems / US Department of Defense
Rocket: Minotaur IV
Launch site: Vandenberg SFB, CA

STP-S29A is a fairly large mission from the US Department of Defense that’ll see Northrop Grumman launch several technology demonstrations into low Earth orbit. Included in the payload are 200 kilograms worth of CubeSats — very small satellites — for testing purposes. In addition, the STPSat-7 will also be deployed, which will track and catalog orbital debris.

September

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off in June 2024.

Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP via Getty Images

IMAP

Exact date: TBA
Organization: SpaceX / NASA
Rocket: Falcon 9 Block 5
Launch site: Cape Canaveral SFS, FL

The IMAP mission is a joint venture between SpaceX and NASA that’ll see the deployment of the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, yet another instrument to measure how solar winds affect things in and around Earth. The probe houses 10 instruments that take various measurements. In addition, the mission will house a small lunar orbiter called Lunar Trailblazer, a solar sail called Solar Cruiser and a weather satellite to study ultraviolet emissions in the Earth’s exosphere.

October

TIS-2

Exact date: TBA
Organization: SpaceX / NASA
Rocket: Falcon 9 Block 5
Launch site: Cape Canaveral, FL

The Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor 2 is a probe from NASA that’ll measure the Sun’s energy input into Earth through solar irradiance measurements. This data will be added to the decades of other Sun-related data that NASA has to better understand just how much energy strikes Earth from the Sun. The TSIS-1 is aboard the ISS and measures similar criteria from there.



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