What to look forward to in space in 2025

Every year, we get to experience not only the wonders of the sky, but also missions to space that expand our knowledge of our universe.

This year, we were treated with a total solar eclipse, fantastic displays of the northern lights — visible in light-polluted cities like Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto — and spectacular meteor showers.

We also saw SpaceX's seemingly miraculous catch of its massive Starship booster, a crucial step in its development of a version of the spaceship that will take astronauts back to the moon in NASA's Artemis program.

So what's ahead for 2025? 

Meteor showers

Hot on the heels of December's Geminid meteor shower comes the Quadrantids.

This meteor shower rivals the two more popular ones: the August Perseids and, of course, the Geminids.

The shower runs from Dec. 26 to Jan. 16, but peaks on the night of Jan. 2-3.

The Quadrantids produce roughly 120 meteors an hour at its peak, but only under ideal conditions. But the good news is that for this shower, the exact peak will be pretty close to when darkness falls.

"The nice thing about the Quadrantids is … we should be able to get within four or five hours of the absolute peak, so that the rate will be over 100 an hour, if it's clear," said Peter Brown, Canada Research Chair in Meteor Astronomy and a professor at Western University in London, Ont.

Another bit of good news is that the moon will only be illuminated by roughly 11 per cent, so it won't interfere with viewers' meteor-watching.

After the Quadrantids, there are other, smaller meteor showers, but none that can boast 100 meteors or more an hour. That is, until August.

That's when we get the Perseids, a meteor shower that is often regarded as the best of the year, mainly because it occurs in summer when the weather is warm and there is a better chance of clear skies.

The shower begins on July 17 and ends on Aug. 23, but its peak night falls on the night of Aug. 12-13. Unfortunately, however, the moon will be roughly 84 per cent illuminated, washing out all but the brightest meteors.

While we've only just come out of the Geminid meteor shower, we can now look ahead to the 2025 Geminids.

Most of the meteors for the 2024 shower were washed out by an almost full moon. But for 2025, the moon will only be roughly 27 per cent illuminated, meaning that this time, viewers can expect to see fainter meteors.

Eclipses

We were spoiled in 2024 with a total solar eclipse that crossed across much of Eastern Canada. Unfortunately, 2025 doesn't bring a solar eclipse anywhere close to Canada. If you're willing to travel, there will be two. There will be a partial solar eclipse in northwest Africa, Europe and northern Russia on March 29. The second — which will also be a partial solar eclipse — occurs on Sept. 21 across the south Pacific Ocean, New Zealand and Antarctica.

We do, however, get a total lunar eclipse on March 13-14.

Unlike solar eclipses, lunar eclipses take hours before reaching totality, or being fully engulfed in Earth's shadow. For this eclipse, across Central and Eastern Canada, totality occurs in the early morning hours of March 14. For those on Pacific time, totality occurs just before midnight on March 13. 

There is another total lunar eclipse on Sept. 7. However, that will only be visible in parts of Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.

To the moon

2025 is chock-full of lunar missions, all setting the stage for the Artemis lunar missions which will see astronauts step foot on the moon within the next two years — the first time since 1972.

Many of these missions are part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) missions. 

The earliest one on the schedule is Blue Ghost 1 by Firefly Aerospace. This mission will send 10 science and technology experiments to the moon, specifically to Mare Crisium, and is set to launch sometime in mid-January. 

Another interesting lunar mission is Intuitive Machines' IM-2, also known as the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1). This ambitious mission will land a drill and mass spectrometer (which measures the content of subsurface material) at the lunar south pole, where NASA plans to land its astronauts in the Artemis III mission. 

This follows Intuitive Machines' IM-1 mission, which made a hard landing on the moon in February, where it ended up on its side. Still, NASA and the company called it a success, as they continued to receive useful data from the lunar surface.

Launching along with PRIME-1 is Lunar Trailblazer, which will orbit the moon and study its water, looking for locations and its distribution. 

The launch is scheduled for no earlier than early 2025.

There are many more of these CLPS missions slated for 2025, though it's likely some will be moved or delayed. You can find out more about them here.

Meanwhile, Japanese lunar exploration company ispace has their own mission called Mission 2, or RESILIENCE. This will be composed of both a lander and a rover, called Tenacious. It has already arrived in Florida, where it will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sometime in early 2025.

Swinging by the Red Planet

While there are no new missions to Mars, we will get a couple of flybys by other spacecraft.

In March, Europa Clipper — which is on its way to Jupiter's icy moon Europa — will swing by the Red Planet, using its gravity to gain speed. Once there, the spacecraft's thermal imager will be turned on and will take images of Mars as a test.

Another flyby comes courtesy the Hera spacecraft, which is on its way to study the binary asteroid system of Didymos and Dimorphos. If you recall, NASA slammed a spacecraft into Dimorphos as part of an asteroid deflection test in 2022. Hera is a European Space Agency spacecraft that will visit the system and study its fallout.

But, just as with the Europa Clipper, Hera is swinging by Mars for gravity assist manoeuvre. But it will also swing by one of Mars' two moons, Deimos in March. 

… and more

There are other things to keep an eye on, including SpaceX's continued tests of its 37-storey Starship, which is likely to see its seventh launch in early 2025. 

There is also the highly ambitious launch of Tianwen-2 by China. This spacecraft, scheduled to launch in early 2025, will visit the near-Earth asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa. Once there, it will attempt to collect samples and return them to Earth in roughly two and a half years.

After that, the spacecraft will come back and swing around Earth for a gravity assist and travel to comet 311P/PANSTARRS, arriving in the mid-2030s.

There is also the Japanese launch of Destiny+ to asteroid 3200 Phaethon. What makes this particularly special is that the asteroid is believed to be the source of December's beautiful meteor shower, the Geminids.

And finally, the sun is still fairly active, so we may be in store for some more displays of the northern lights.