2025 is going to be a year of records and breakthroughs for space travel. Some of the missions are going to break out of Earth’s bounds this coming year. Satellite launches, testing of new technologies, and major milestones toward manned lunar and other missions have been prepared for 2025 by big space agencies like NASA and ESA. Although the Artemis 3 mission to return humans to the Moon has been postponed until 2027, 2025 will still be a very important year in preparing for this and other major milestones in space exploration. Here are 5 space missions planned for 2025.
The launch of SPHEREx
NASA and SpaceX plan to send the SPHEREx – Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer-space telescope into space in late February 2025. It will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Base in California. The SPHEREx is the size of a small car astrophysical observatory. The fact that it has the responsibility to make a three-dimensional map of the entire sky means it will shoot photos in 102 different wavelengths, thus allowing hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies to be viewed with unimagined accuracy.
Scientists will study three of the most important features of cosmological research by means of this map. First, the investigation of cosmic inflation, when space expanded a trillion trillion times in a moment just after the Big Bang; secondly, the mission tries to make a measure of the overall brightness of galaxies-even those which so far have escaped direct observation-necessary for the mapping of sources of radiation in the universe. SPHEREx will finally seek out, in the Milky Way, the icy grains of water, carbon dioxide, and other constituents essential to life.
Starship’s first in-flight refueling test
SpaceX intends to begin the first-ever in-orbit refuelling battle between Starships in 2025. This is a development that is expected to change the dynamics of long-range space travel. Kent Chojnacki, who is the deputy manager of NASA’s Human Landing System program, said this in an interview with Spaceflight Now some weeks ago, adding this test is likely to be conducted in March 2025. “Once this is done, it will actually make it possible to transport very large quantities of payload beyond the orbit of the Earth,” Chojnacki explained.
The launch of ESA’s Sentinel-1D satellite
Sentinel-1D marks the Fourth satellite in the Sentinel family, making it now four satellites, including Sentinal 1A, 1B, and 1C. The launch has been set for September 2025, and the satellite aims to replace Sentinal 1A. As a part of the Copernicus program launched by the European Union, all four of the satellites are designed and managed by the European Space Agency. Furthermore, for these sentinels, their missions never seem to end, even when new ones are launched; early 2024 saw the launch of Sentinal 1C onboard the Vega C Boundary.
As for why they get launched, one might say, “This crucial mission demonstrates the return of two space champions: the Vega C rocket, produced by the Avio company, and Sentinel-1C, an extremely important satellite of the European program of Earth observation above Copernicus” said Nuno Miranda when speaking concerning the European Space Agency. Thanks to the uplifting research of Italian technologies, previous satellites, such as Sentinal 1D, have been proven to be useful due to the synthetic aperture radar that can gauge imagery during any time period or weather.

The launch of the first lunar space station module
Within the framework of the Artemis program, it is planned to launch Halo (Habitation and Logistics Outpost) – the first module of the future Gateway space station meant to be placed in a lunar orbit and constructed in Italy at Thales Alenia Space’s Turin facilities – in November 2025. Halo will be the first module occupied by astronauts, as well as a docking point for various devices. However, it is expected that in 2028, the I-Hab module will be launched.
This module is expected to contain 10 cubic meters of volume and will have four ports: one for interfacing with Halo, one for an airlock (an exit port to outside) and two for docking to space capsules. It is being constructed in Turin, and at the same time, its full-scale model has been built, which will remain on the surface and will be used by engineers to adjust the various systems in the module.
The launch of the Smile mission
The Smile mission, elaborated jointly by the Esa and Cas, is going to lift off at the end of 2025. It will be launched using the Vega-C rocket from the European spaceport in French Guiana. The Smile mission is going to study the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetosphere of Earth. The mission shall contribute, through X-ray and ultraviolet imaging, to basic information on the processes acting upon space weather and Earth’s magnetic environment.
Finally, Nasa announced that the United States had postponed its plan to return to the Moon with the Artemis 3 mission from 2026 to “mid-2027” due to problems with the Orion crew capsule. Artemis 2, a manned mission that will not land on the lunar surface, “has also been postponed from September 2025 to April 2026,” reported NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Artemis 3, in which the first woman and the first person of color will set foot on lunar soil at the Moon’s south pole, is now expected to take place in mid-2027.”