Uncrewed lunar missions and 1st private space station among 2025 space launches

In 2024, the United States returned a spacecraft to the lunar surface, private astronauts accomplished historic firsts and SpaceX ramped up testing of a vehicle that will prove pivotal in humanity's deep-space exploration ambitions.

If the past year of spaceflight was defined by a series of epic missions that pushed the boundaries of cosmic exploration, 2025 is poised to be no less exciting. Humans may not be heading back to the moon as soon as NASA had hoped, but that hardly means the year ahead will be anticlimactic.

From uncrewed lunar missions to the launch of the first private space station, here's a sneak peek at the space missions that may define 2025:

A year in space exploration: From Starship tests to Starliner woes, recapping the biggest spaceflight missions of 2024

SpaceX looks to increase Starship launches

Billionaire Elon Musk is pushing for SpaceX to significantly ramp up Starship test launches in 2025.

The proposal from Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of the commercial space transportation company, would more than quintuple the flight tests of the massive SpaceX megarocket from four demonstrations in 2024 to 25 next year. Though Musk's request would need approval from federal regulators, it comes as the tech mogul's influence over U.S. policy is likely to grow when President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.

SpaceX envisions the spacecraft, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, as being a fully reusable transportation system that can carry both humans and cargo to Earth's orbit, the moon and even Mars.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is rapidly preparing for the seventh overall flight test of the 400-foot-tall Starship, composed of both a spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket booster. The company has not yet announced a target date for the launch.

Firefly to send lander with NASA instruments to moon

A commercial lunar lander will soon be heading to the moon with a fleet of scientific instruments on board for a $93.3 million NASA mission to study the moon's environment before humans return.

NASA selected Firefly Aerospace in 2021 to make the first of at least two robotic deliveries to the moon. The aerospace company, based in Cedar Park, Texas, has designed and will operate the Blue Ghost lander that will deliver 10 science and technology payloads for the U.S. space agency.

A six-day launch window opens no earlier than mid-January for the company's first launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

After it reaches lunar orbit, the uncrewed craft will land near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium – a 300-mile-wide basin in the northeast quadrant of the moon's near side. The instruments the lander carries will test things like the lunar's subsurface and global navigation satellite abilities. The data NASA hopes to collect should also provide insights into how space weather and other cosmic forces effect Earth.

Future missions led by Firefly will be to the moon's far side and will include delivering a satellite that will orbit the region.

Firefly is one of several American companies contracted by NASA for lunar missions in the next few months as part of the government agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS. In recent years, NASA has shifted to paying private companies for missions it once would carry out itself as a way to cut costs.

NASA's SPHEREx telescope to study origin of universe

NASA's cutting-edge SPHEREx telescope is on the cusp of launching on a mission to solve some of the universe's oldest mysteries – including how it came to be.

The acronym is a mouthful: The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer. The mission, though, is much more straightforward: Explore the origins of the universe.

The telescope, which has a steep $242 million price tag, was developed to survey more than 450 million galaxies and 100 million stars in our own Milky Way. Some galaxies it will observe are so distant that their light has taken 10 billion years to reach Earth.

The space telescope is able to detect more than 100 colors in both optical and near-infrared light which, though not visible to the human eye, serves as a powerful tool for answering cosmic questions, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managing the mission.

The mission will search the universe for signs of water and organic molecules – the ingredients of life – at disks around stars where new planets could be forming and in stellar nurseries. These regions are where stars are born from gas and dust.

The two-year mission will launch no earlier than late-February.

Boeing Starliner astronauts to return on SpaceX vehicle

NASA's Starliner astronauts will make their long-awaited homecoming to Earth as early as the end of March.

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore weren't supposed to be at the International Space Station beyond a few days in June when they reached the orbital outpost on the inaugural flight test for Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. But their return was delayed multiple times until NASA finally decided in August that the safest route would be to send the pair back to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon vehicle.

The Boeing Starliner undocked in September without them, landing in the New Mexico desert.

The Starliner astronauts were slated to return in February with two spacefarers who are part of a SpaceX mission called Crew-9. But earlier in December, NASA opted to delay that return until late March to give time to ready the Dragon vehicle that will ferry their replacements to the space station.

World's first commercial space station to reach orbit

NASA may be set to retire the International Space Station in the years ahead, but one private company is already planning to launch one of its own.

In fact, the first step in establishing the world’s first commercial space station will come as early as August 2025.

Vast, a space company based in Long Beach, California, announced in 2023 plans to launch its space station, called Haven-1.

The mission will be quickly followed by Vast-1, the first human spaceflight mission to Haven-1. The four-person crew will ride a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to dock with the space station for up to 30 days while orbiting Earth, according to Vast.

Launching on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Haven-1 will initially act as an independent crewed space station prior to being connected as a module to Haven-2, a larger Vast space station. Haven-2, which Vast has proposed as a successor to the International Space Station, could be up and running in low Earth orbit by 2028, two years before the ISS is officially slated to be decommissioned, according to the company.

Intuitive Machines to launch another lunar lander

Fresh off becoming the first-ever commercial company to land an uncrewed spacecraft on the moon, Intuitive Machines is eyeing a return to the lunar surface.

Intuitive Machines’ second awarded flight, IM-2, is scheduled to launch sometime in 2025 and land at the lunar south pole, according to NASA.

The lunar landing attempt comes after the Houston space company's 14-foot-tall Nova-C the lander, nicknamed Odysseus for the hero of Greek myth, made it to the moon in February 2024 marking America's first return to the moon since NASA's Apollo era in the 1970s. The area where the lander touched down is also considered to be the southernmost location where any craft has ever landed on the moon.

The next NOVA-C lunar lander, which SpaceNews reported has been dubbed "Athena," is planned to land near the Shackleton impact crater with a drill and a mass spectrometer, NASA said.

The spacecraft will share a ride to the moon with the NASA Lunar Trailblazer orbiter. The Lunar Trailblazer will be launched with the IM-2 lander on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The Lunar Trailblazer is set to map the distribution of the different forms of water that exist on the surface of the Moon.

That could prove helpful in the years ahead, when NASA's Artemis campaign aims to establish a lunar settlement on the south pole. Water ice thought to be abundant in the region could be extracted and used for drinking, breathing and as a source of hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NASA, SpaceX lead upcoming space launches: 6 missions planned for 2025