What did 2025 bring to space exploration?

• Will 2025 be like how the Jetsons lived in 2062? Discover the technologies that emerged this year

The Moon has once again become a frequent destination, particularly for private companies, while Earth observation is gaining strategic strength in Europe. At the same time, China has quietly advanced long-range missions, targeting not only Earth’s orbit but also small bodies in the solar system. Not everything went according to plan – and that is perhaps the main mark of 2025: a year that adjusted expectations and showed that the path to space continues to be one of trial, error and correction.

The main lunar moment of the year took place on January 15, with the launch of the Blue Ghost module, from the American company Firefly Aerospace, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. Carrying ten NASA payloads, the module successfully landed on March 2 in Mare Crisium, a vast lunar plain.

For approximately two weeks, it carried out scientific and technological experiments as planned, including soil drilling, thermal measurements and regolith analyses. The mission officially ended on March 16, after losing contact with the module at the end of the lunar day, an outcome considered expected.

A few days later, on February 27, the IM-2 mission, from Intuitive Machines, was launched with the Athena module. The landing took place on March 6, near the Moon’s south pole, and images were transmitted to Earth.

The initial success, however, was short-lived: the module ended up tipping over on uneven ground, which compromised the operation of the instruments. With the batteries unable to recharge properly, the mission was aborted before achieving its primary objectives.

Other private lunar initiatives planned for 2025 – such as Intuitive Machines’ IM-3 mission, as well as projects from Astrobotic and Blue Origin – have continued without detailed public information, reinforcing the contrast between ambitious rhetoric and the sector’s operational reality.

Looking at Earth and beyond

While the Moon attracted attention, Earth’s orbit was the scene of less spectacular but fundamental advances. In 2025, the European Space Agency continued to strengthen the Copernicus program.

On November 4, the Sentinel-1D satellite was launched aboard the Ariane 6 rocket, increasing the continent’s environmental monitoring capacity. Its first image, in false colors, showed northern Germany, with agricultural fields, urban areas and rivers like the Elbe and Weser stretching to the North Sea.

Another reinforcement came with Sentinel-6B, which was commissioned with the mission of measuring sea level rise with high precision – data essential for monitoring the impacts of climate change.

On July 2, the launch of Sentinel-4 marked a significant step forward: it is the first mission in geostationary orbit dedicated exclusively to the observation of air quality in Europe.

Further from Earth, China took a strategic step with the launch of the Tianwen-2 mission on May 28. The initial destination is the near-Earth asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, from where the probe plans to take samples before heading toward comet 311P/PanSTARRS.

The mission is ongoing and could help clarify whether the asteroid is, in fact, a fragment of the Moon ejected by an ancient impact, in addition to paving the way for future Chinese deep space exploration missions.

The year was also marked by frustrations. The IM-2 mission failed to achieve its central objectives, and SpaceX’s promise of up to 25 Starship flights in 2025 was far from coming to fruition. In March, the eighth test flight of the megarocket ended without achieving the expected objectives, highlighting the difficulties of quickly scaling a project of this scale.