ScientistPankaj: Launches, moon landings and more: Here's the top spaceflight missions to watch in 2025

Moon landings and more: 2025's top space missions | Space Quiz! Do galaxies with supermassive black holes at their center produce new stars faster or slower than galaxies without supermassive black hole? | Satellites map Earth's ocean floors in unprecedented detail

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January 2, 2025

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The Launchpad

Moon landings and more: 2025's top space missions

(NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; image processing by Gary Eason © CC B)

2025 is set to dazzle with a wide array of exciting and spectacular space missions. On tap are a flurry of moon landing attempts, high-profile test launches of SpaceX's Starship megarocket, human spaceflight adventures and asteroid sampling missions. Here's a look at some of the most alluring space events expected in the coming year.

Full Story: Space (1/1)

Space Quiz! Do galaxies with supermassive black holes at their center produce new stars faster or slower than galaxies without supermassive black hole?

Learn the answer here!

Faster

Slower

the same

scientists don't know

Satellites map Earth's ocean floors in unprecedented detail

(NASA/SWOT)

A new satellite has mapped Earth's ocean floors in unprecedented detail, a new study reveals. The first year of measurements from NASA's Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission, launched in December 2022 and developed by NASA and France's Centre National D'Etudes Spatiales, enabled researchers to study the boundaries between continents and identify underwater hills and volcanoes that are too small to be detected by earlier satellites.

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Skywatching

Skywatchers photograph storms spark New Years auroras

(Alex Nicodim/Anadolu via Getty Images)

What a start to 2025! While many celebrated New Year's Eve with bursts of glittering fireworks, Earth joined the festivities with a natural display of its own: the northern lights. Two coronal mass ejections (CME) struck Earth's magnetic field, sparking geomagnetic storm conditions and painting the night sky with vivid aurora displays as far south as California U.S., Austria, and Germany. The geomagnetic storms waxed and waned throughout the night, creating a dynamic celestial fireworks show that stretched well into the new year.

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Science & Astronomy

Black holes can squash star formation, JWST finds

(ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, H. Dannerbauer)

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope found evidence that supermassive black holes suppress star formation in maturing galaxies. The team used the James Webb Space Telescope's (JWST) Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), analyzed 19 galaxies that are part of the Spiderweb protocluster, one of the best studied galaxy groups in the universe, which lies some 11 billion light-years away from Earth.

Full Story: Space (1/2)

SpaceX

Will 2025 be the year of Starship?

(Space.com / Josh Dinner)

SpaceX's Starship megarocket may come into its own in 2025. The 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket system ever built, and it's designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. In 2025, SpaceX could try to launch it up to 25 times.

Full Story: Space (12/30)

Technology

New 'metamaterial'could build shapeshifting space habitats

(NASA)

In living things, structures are built from simple, repeatable patterns. These often come in the form of a disorganized lattice. Large structures, like bones or coral, emerge from repeated rounds of growth of a fundamental pattern that builds off of itself in a haphazard way. Now, researchers have designed a flexible material that could pave the way for the development of adaptable space structures.

Full Story: Space (12/30)

Search for Life

We finally know where to look for life on Mars

(NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems)

Ever since the discovery of methane on Mars, scientists have wondered if the Red Planet might harbor life. Now, researchers know where to look: deep under the surface of a broad Martian plain.

Full Story: Space (1/1)

Star Trek

Did 'Lower Decks' just set up an exciting new spin-off?

(Paramount)

"All Good Things", "What You Leave Behind", "Endgame"… Now "The New Next Generation" becomes the latest addition to the pantheon of memorable "Star Trek" season finales, as the franchise's only out-and-out comedy, "Lower Decks", goes out in style.

Full Story: Space (12/19)