Moon missions in 2025: Five missions will help astronauts return to the moon
CORRECTION: The Resilience lander and Tenacious rover in the Hakuto Mission 2 were incorrectly identified as being part of a NASA CLPS mission. It is a Japanese-led commercial mission.
Astronauts won't be walking on the moon until 2027, but you’ll see a lot of rockets heading there this year, part of an ambitious series of uncrewed missions that will help humans return to the lunar surface.
The missions will use landers, rovers, and orbiters to analyze lunar soil, bolster communications systems, and hunt for highly valued water ice, which future crews could convert to drinkable water and oxygen, and components for rocket fuel.
Unlike the Apollo flights, these aren’t just NASA missions that are getting us back to the moon.
Get comfortable with the acronym CLPS, which stands for Commercial Lunar Payload Services. That’s a NASA program in which the space agency teams up with American companies to send scientific and exploration instruments to the moon.
Here’s what to know about moon missions in 2025:
Blue Ghost Mission 1
◾ What's the mission? The CLPS mission will take the Blue Ghost lander, which resembles a smaller version of the Apollo lunar descent module, to the lunar surface.
◾ Type of craft: Lander.
◾ Who's doing it? NASA and Firefly Aerospace, a Cedar Park, Texas, company that manufactures and operates launch vehicles and spacecraft.
◾ Launched: Jan. 15.
◾ Launch vehicle: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which it shared with the Resilience lander to get into space.
◾ Launch site: Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
◾ Landing site: Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises) northeast of the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility), the site of the Apollo 11 landing in 1969.
◾ Target landing date: March 2.
◾ Objectives: The Blue Ghost lander, built by Firefly, will take NASA science and technology instruments to the lunar surface. The devices will be used to analyze lunar rock samples, evaluate navigation systems, and test ways of keeping lunar dust from interfering with landers.
Resilience | Hakuto Mission 2
◾ What's the mission? The mission will put Resilience, a Japanese lander on the moon, deploy Tenacious, a small rover, and conduct scientific experiments. It was launched with the Blue Ghost lander on the same Falcon 9 rocket.
◾ Type of craft: Lander and rover.
◾ Who's doing it? ispace, a Japanese lunar robotic exploration company.
◾ Launched: Jan. 15.
◾ Launch vehicle: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
◾ Launch site: Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
◾ Landing site: Mare Frigoris (Sea of Cold) region in the north of the moon.
◾ Target landing date: May or June.
◾ Objectives: Resilience will carry the rover and five scientific payloads, according to space.com. One will attempt to produce oxygen and hydrogen from lunar water sources, and another will monitor radiation levels during the flight and after the landing. A third will try to cultivate algae as part of a possible future food source.
Intuitive Machines 2
◾ What's the mission? The Athena lander in the CLPS mission will put drills, a mass spectrometer – a chemical analysis device – near the moon's south pole to search for lunar water ice. It'll also deploy the small Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform rover, which will carry AstroAnt, an inch-long robot with magnetic wheels that will travel across the top of the MAPP rover and measure its temperature.
◾ Type of craft: Lander and rover.
◾ Who's doing it? NASA and Intuitive Machines, a space exploration company in Houston.
◾ Launch: Late February.
◾ Launch vehicle: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
◾ Launch site: Cape Canaveral.
◾ Landing site: Near the Shackleton Crater, close to the south pole.
Target landing date: March 6 or 7.
◾ Objectives: The mission's rover will look inside the icy crater for water ice and other volatiles – chemical elements that can vaporize into a gas – at the lunar south pole.
Lunar Trailblazer
◾ What's the mission? A spacecraft will circle the moon to remotely map different forms of water on the lunar surface.
◾ Type of craft: Orbiter.
◾ Who's doing it? NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the California Institute of Technology. It's part of NASA's Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration program, which uses smaller, low-cost spacecraft for scientific flights. Lockheed Martin built the spacecraft and is shipping it to Cape Canaveral this week.
◾ Launch: Early 2025.
◾ Launch vehicle: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
◾ Launch Site: Cape Canaveral.
◾ Orbit: Polar orbit around the moon.
◾ Arrival date: To be determined.
◾ Objectives: The mission will locate different forms and amounts of water ice on the moon, which may offer insights into the lunar water cycle and provide locations where future crewed missions could recover water ice for analysis, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory says.
Griffin Mission 1
◾ What's the mission? The CLPS mission originally intended to carry VIPER, a water ice-seeking rover, to the lunar surface. VIPER – Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover – was canceled in July because of cost overruns. The lander mission, carrying scientific instruments, will proceed.
◾ Who's doing it? NASA and Astrobotic Technology, an aerospace company based in Pittsburgh.
◾ Type of craft: Lander.
◾ Launch: November.
◾ Launch vehicle: SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
◾ Launch site: To be determined.
◾ Landing site: Mons Mouton, near the western rim of Nobile crater, close to the lunar south pole.
◾ Arrival date: To be determined.
◾ Objectives: Though the rover won't be aboard, the mission will take place as a flight demonstration of the Astrobotic lander and its engines, NASA says.
Two other lunar missions possible
Lunar Pathfinder: This CLPS mission, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, will put a communications relay satellite into lunar orbit. It's planned to launch in late 2025 or 2026.
Intuitive Machines 3: This CLPS mission will put a lander and rover on the moon's Reiner Gamma region in the Oceanus Procellarum. An orbiting data relay satellite will also be deployed. The launch is planned for late 2025 or early 2026.
When will astronauts return to the moon?
The uncrewed Artemis I mission successfully sent the Orion spacecraft around the moon and back in 2022.
The first crewed mission, Artemis II, is scheduled to launch in April 2026. It won’t land on the moon, but it will instead send four astronauts around the moon and back.
Artemis III is the first planned human landing on the moon. It will launch in mid-2027 with a crew of four. The landing site will be in the lunar south pole region.
Artemis III will be the first crewed landing on the moon since Apollo 17 landed in the Taurus-Littrow Valley in December 1972.
CONTRIBUTING Eric Lagatta, Paste BN
SOURCE Paste BN Network reporting and research; Reuters; NASA; SpaceX; European Space Agency; Astrobotics; ispace; space.com; arstechnica.com; Lunar Outpost