As 2025 begins, a thrilling array of space missions awaits humanity, making the new year a landmark year for space explorations.
Over the next 12 months, the spotlight will be on several ambitious projects. January and February will see lunar landing attempts.
The highly anticipated launch of SpaceX's Starship megarocket, and the collection of samples from a near-Earth asteroid, among other ventures.
Let’s delve into some of the most exciting and awe-inspiring space missions slated for this year.
Texas-based Firefly Aerospace will launch the “Ghost Riders in the Sky” in mid-January, which hopes to ferry a moon lander with 10 Nasa payloads.
The mission will head to Mons Latreille, a volcanic feature that was formed by volcanic eruptions on the natural satellite over 3 billion years ago, according to LiveScience.
Blue Ghost 1 is expected to operate during the daylight hours of one lunar day, roughly equalling 14 Earth days.
It will embark on a journey that will gather data about the moon's regolith, or rocky surface and how that rock interacts with the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field. Towards the end of the mission, it will also take images of the moon's sunset and collect data about what changes on the lunar surface at the time of dusk.
As for the Texas-based Intuitive Machine, they hope to land its IM-2 spacecraft south of the moon in February. The mission aims to measure the natural satellite's volatiles or delicate chemical compounds using a drill and mass spectrometer.
The spacecraft will also carry Lunar Trailblazer, a small satellite which is designed to map water deposits on the moon to help Nasa in selecting and identifying its future landing sites for its Artemis missions.
Nasa's Juno spacecraft has been diligently studying Jupiter and its moons since 2016. The mission had been extended previously but will finally breathe its last in September 2025 as the spacecraft is set to swirl into the gas giant.
It can only live if it survives Jupiter's intense radiation.
As per the mission plan, Juno's orbit will lessen gradually and will allow itself to be pulled into Jupiter's gravity and into its dense clouds.
The final hurl is set to last about 5.5 days and will ensure the spacecraft and any Earthly bacteria that may have travelled with it don't accidentally contaminate Jupiter's ice-crusted moon Europa, considered to be one of the best places in our solar system to find extraterrestrial life by our scientists.
China is gearing up for a mission to scoop up pieces of a near-Earth asteroid, return the samples to Earth and then explore a comet deep into space.
The Tianwen-2 spacecraft which is scheduled to launch in May 2025, will rendezvous with 469219 Kamo'oalewa.
The spacecraft will conduct remote sensing observations to assess potential landing sites before it attempts to collect samples from the rock. The samples will then be transferred to Earth and then it will use the planet's gravity to fling itself into a seven-year deep space mission that will take it to the main-belt comet 311P/PANSTARRS in the 2030s.
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