Here are the launches and landings we’re most excited about in 2026
SOURCE:Ars Technica Science|BY:
Stephen Clark
A lot could happen in space this year, but let's get real about what actually will.
Looking ahead
A lot could happen in space this year, but let’s get real about what actually will.
The patch for NASA's Artemis II mission is projected on the exterior of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
The patch for NASA's Artemis II mission is projected on the exterior of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
Last year delivered doses of drama and excitement in the space business, with a record number of launches, breathtaking vistas of other worlds, and a multitude of breakthroughs and setbacks. 2026 is shaping up to be another thrilling year in the cosmos.
For the first time in more than 54 years, astronauts are training to travel to the vicinity of the Moon, perhaps within the next couple of months. NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other companies are poised to take major steps toward actually landing humans on the Moon, perhaps within a few years.
New rockets are slated to debut in 2026, and scientists hope to open new windows on the Universe. Here, we list the most anticipated space missions scheduled for this year, ranked according to our own anticipation for them. We also assess the chances of these missions actually happening in the next 12 months. Unless specified, we don’t assess the chances of a successful outcome.
1. Artemis II
Final preparations for the Artemis II mission are well underway at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft fully integrated inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. Within a couple of weeks, the SLS rocket could roll to Launch Complex 39B for a countdown dress rehearsal. Then, perhaps in February, the Artemis II mission is scheduled to depart Florida’s Space Coast on a 10-day flight that will carry astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen around the far side of the Moon and back to Earth. This will be the first crew flight on the SLS rocket and Orion capsule. Even if delays prevent a launch in February, Artemis II is well-positioned to fly by spring or summer. Chance of Artemis II happening in 2026: 90 percent.
2. Starship refueling demo
The next mission on our list is on SpaceX’s Starship roadmap for 2026. A demonstration of large-scale orbital refueling is key to unlocking Starship’s ability to travel beyond low-Earth orbit. SpaceX must master its refueling capability before sending Starships to the Moon to fulfill the company’s lunar lander contract with NASA. The same can be said for SpaceX’s future plans for Starship flights to Mars. This first refueling demo will involve two Starship launches from separate launch pads in Texas, or perhaps Florida. The ships will link up together in orbit, and one will attempt to transfer super-cold methane and liquid oxygen propellants to the other. Cryogenic refueling has never been tried at this scale in space before.
Chance of a refueling demo happening in 2026: 50 percent.
3. Catch of Starship
SpaceX plans to debut its next version of Starship—Starship Version 3, or V3, with an inaugural test flight in the next few months. This first flight of Starship V3 will look a lot like SpaceX’s past Starship test flights, with the rocket launching from South Texas and flying on a suborbital arc halfway around the world for a precise ocean landing.
If that goes well, SpaceX could take the next step in Starship development on the following flight. This will entail launching Starship—the world’s largest rocket—into low-Earth orbit and bringing the ship back for a reentry over northern Mexico and recovery back at SpaceX’s test facility at Starbase, Texas. There, the ship will be caught back at its launch pad with giant mechanical arms, similar to how SpaceX has recovered the rocket’s Super Heavy booster. A successful catch would be a major leap toward making Starship fully reusable. Chance of a successful Starship catch happening in 2026: 70 percent.
SpaceX’s Starship descends toward the Indian Ocean at the conclusion of Flight 11 in October. We may see a similar view of Starship returning to its launch pad in Texas in 2026.
Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX’s Starship descends toward the Indian Ocean at the conclusion of Flight 11 in October. We may see a similar view of Starship returning to its launch pad in Texas in 2026. Credit: SpaceX
4. Blue Moon Mark 1
Blue Origin’s first lunar lander is a behemoth. If successful, the Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander will become the largest spacecraft to ever set down on the lunar surface. The craft stands more than 26 feet (8 meters) tall and is more than 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter. Engineers in Florida are finishing up assembly of the first Blue Moon Mark 1 before shipping it to Houston for environmental testing.
The lander will then travel back to Cape Canaveral for preparations to fly on top of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. The company’s current plan is to launch the Moon lander on a New Glenn rocket some time this year. The unpiloted lander’s first jaunt to the Moon will take on greater importance as engineers study the possibility of modifying future Blue Moon Mark 1s for astronauts. Chance of Blue Moon Mark 1 launching in 2026: 70 percent.
5a. Rocket Lab’s Neutron debut (tied with Stoke’s Nova)
Rocket Lab has comfortably held second place among US rocket companies for number of launches per year. The company’s light-class launcher, the Electron, surpassed a monthly launch cadence in 2025. Rocket Lab’s next rocket, the medium-lift Neutron, will open new markets for the company. Neutron is designed with a reusable first stage and integrated payload fairing, which will return to Earth in one piece after releasing the rocket’s expendable upper stage to accelerate into orbit.
The launch pad at Wallops Island, Virginia, is complete, but the rocket wasn’t ready to meet Rocket Lab’s goal of a first flight by the end of 2025. Rocket Lab’s founder, Peter Beck, has a history of giving his team ambitious schedules for the first flight of Neutron. His latest projection calls for delivering the first Neutron rocket to the launch site in the first quarter of 2026, “with first launch thereafter.” Chance of Neutron launching in 2026:50 percent.
5b. First flight of Stoke’s Nova rocket (tied with Rocket Lab’s Neutron)
Unlike Rocket Lab, Stoke Space has no experience in launching orbital rockets, but the company’s founders have an impressive pedigree with long tenures overseeing propulsion projects at Blue Origin. Stoke’s first rocket, the Nova, is officially scheduled to fly for the first time in 2026. Construction is in an advanced stage for Nova’s launch site at Cape Canaveral, while Nova’s first and second stages underwent qualification testing last year.
Engineers completed the first hot-fire test of the rocket’s first stage engine in 2024 in Washington state, following earlier tests of the upper stage propulsion system. What’s unique about Nova is that it’s designed for full reusability, with a recoverable booster and upper stage. Stoke is the only company besides SpaceX that seems close to actually test-flying a fully reusable rocket. Chance of Nova launching in 2026: 3****0 percent.
7. Debut of China’s Moon ship
China’s goal of landing astronauts on the Moon by 2030 is now less than five years away, and a critical test of the country’s new human-rated spacecraft is scheduled for launch sometime in 2026. The partially reusable Mengzhou spacecraft is designed to carry up to seven people to the China’s Tiangong space station or a smaller crew on voyages to the Moon, eventually replacing China’s Shenzhou crew capsule tailored for low-Earth orbit missions.
Mengzhou is akin to NASA’s Orion spacecraft or Apollo command module and is a key element of China’s lunar architecture, along with a human-rated lander named Lanyue, which will make its debut in space on a separate mission. It will launch on China’s new Long March 10A rocket, which the China Manned Space Agency says will make its first flight along with Mengzhou—likely uncrewed—some time this year. We’ve seen hot-fire testing of the rocket’s booster stage in recent months, and China typically does not publicize launch schedules without believing they are realistic. Chance of Long March 10A and Mengzhou launching in 2026: 60 percent.
This is a view familiar to anyone who has watched a SpaceX launch, but this image comes from a camera onboard China’s Zhuque-3 rocket. The booster extended four grid fins, just like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, to help guide it toward a landing attempt downrange.
Credit: LandSpace
This is a view familiar to anyone who has watched a SpaceX launch, but this image comes from a camera onboard China’s Zhuque-3 rocket. The booster extended four grid fins, just like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, to help guide it toward a landing attempt downrange. Credit: LandSpace
8. China’s race for a reusable rocket
The first of several reusable rockets under development in China launched in early December. The medium-class Zhuque-3 rocket, developed by a commercial startup named LandSpace, successfully reached orbit on its debut flight, a remarkable achievement in its own right. But LandSpace’s attempt to land the rocket’s first stage booster downrange showed it is close to recovering—and eventually reusing—a Zhuque-3 booster stage.
The rocket failed during its landing burn moments before landing, then crashed right next to its landing pad in the Gobi Desert. LandSpace will try again with Zhuque-3, and other companies have rockets that will make similar attempts in the coming months. Chance of a Chinese orbital-class rocket making a successful landing in 2026: 60 percent.
9. Launch of Haven-1
If you look at public schedules, the California-based company Vast seems to have a significant head start in the race to put a commercial space station in orbit before the International Space Station’s retirement in 2030. Vast’s first crewed habitat, named Haven-1, is under construction for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, followed by the first of up to four visits by private crews on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, with each stay lasting up to 10 days. This capability is far short of the permanent human presence supported by the ISS, but a successful launch and activation of Haven-1 would be a significant accomplishment for the commercial space industry.
Vast aims to follow Haven-1 with a larger space station to accommodate visitors for longer stays. So what’s the status of Haven-1? The primary structure of the flight module completed structural testing in October and was set to undergo final weld inspections and integration soon thereafter. Vast’s most recent public schedule called for the launch of Haven-1 as soon as May 2026, but it seems likely to take longer than that to fully outfit the module’s interior, which appeared bare during structural testing earlier this fall. Chance of Haven-1 launching in 2026: 30 percent.
10. NASA’s Roman Space Telescope
The next of NASA’s flagship-class astronomical observatories is now fully assembled at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named for NASA’s first chief astronomer, will have a field of view at least 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope. Roman’s primary science instrument will perform wide-area surveys of the Universe, covering 50 times more of the sky in five years than Hubble did in its first 30 years.
A secondary coronagraph instrument will advance astronomers’ ability to directly image exoplanets. NASA announced in December that assembly of Roman was completed, kicking off a series of environmental tests before its scheduled launch no earlier than September on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Chance of the Roman Space Telescope launching in 2026: 80 percent.
11. China’s Chang’e 7 mission
The next robotic mission in China’s lunar exploration program is scheduled for launch as soon as August 2026. Chang’e 7 won’t repeat China’s past feat of returning samples from the Moon, but it will have its share of firsts. The lander will attempt to set down in the Moon’s south pole region and deploy a miniature flying probe to search for water ice in cold traps hidden on the floors of dark craters. The target landing site is on the rim of Shackleton Crater, which is within range of cold, unlit regions thought to harbor water ice. If successful, Chang’e 7 will be the first mission to locate and characterize water ice deposits on the lunar surface, beating similar US missions to the Moon by a year or more. Chance of Chang’e 7 launching in 2026: 80 percent.
12. The rise of Europe’s commercial launchers
Similar to the way we addressed China’s emerging reusable rockets, we decided to group Europe’s new startup launch companies together in a single entry. Three of these European companies say they are targeting the first flight of their small satellite launchers in 2026. One is Isar Aerospace, headquartered near Munich, which launched its first Spectrum rocket in March 2025. The rocket didn’t make it far, but Isar is gearing up for a second orbital launch attempt in the early weeks of 2026.
Trailing behind Isar is Rocket Factory Augsburg, another German company, which appeared to be on track to launch its first RFA One rocket before a fiery accident during a test-firing in 2024. PLD Space of Spain is targeting a first flight of its Miura 5 rocket in 2026, although it seems to be lagging behind Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg. Other serious contenders in the European small launch arena include MaiaSpace of France and Germany’s HyImpulse. Both appear to have delayed their first orbital launch attempts to 2027. Chance of a European launch startup reaching orbit in 2026: 20 percent.
Relativity’s methane-fueled Aeon R engine is test-fired at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
Credit: Relativity Space
Relativity’s methane-fueled Aeon R engine is test-fired at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Credit: Relativity Space
13. Terran R’s first flight
Relativity Space is officially targeting the first flight of its heavy-lift Terran R rocket in late 2026, but there is reason for skepticism. At its Long Beach, California, headquarters, Relativity is wrapping up welding on the first stage, second stage, and interstage adapter for Terran R’s first flight, while also installing internal fluid lines to flow propellant to the rocket’s engines. Each stage is expected to undergo structural testing and acceptance testing at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi before shipment to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for launch preparations. At Stennis, Relativity is performing acceptance testing on first stage engines and continuing developmental testing on Terran R’s upper stage engine. The company says it has now completed more than 300 hotfire tests of the rocket’s Aeon R booster engine. Construction is still in full swing at the Terran R’s launch pad in Florida. Chance of Terran R’s first launch in 2026: 10 percent.
14. Debut of Eclipse
Another rocket that is officially scheduled to launch in late 2026 is Eclipse, the new medium-lift launcher under joint development by Firefly Aerospace and Northrop Grumman. On paper, the Eclipse rocket is at about the same stage of development as Relativity’s Terran R. The most recent update from Firefly indicated the company has completed more than 100 hot-fire tests of the Eclipse’s Miranda main engine. Relativity is already test-firing its upper stage engine, while Firefly has not yet achieved that milestone. Chance of Eclipse’s first launch in 2026: 20 percent.
15. IM-3 and Vestri
The first US company to put a spacecraft on the Moon plans to return to the lunar surface in 2026. Intuitive Machines is preparing to launch its third Nova-C lander in the second half of the year, but it hasn’t released a more specific schedule. In the company’s most recent quarterly update, officials said they are targeting May 2026 for a flight readiness review, the last review before shipping the spacecraft to the launch site in Florida.
Intuitive Machines’ first two landers toppled over after landing but still returned some limited science data to Earth. The next lander will incorporate updated navigation sensors to help guide it to a gentle touchdown in the Reiner Gamma region on the Moon’s near side. A secondary payload will hitch a ride to space on the same launcher with IM-3. The Vestri mission from the asteroid mining company AstroForge will head into the Solar System and attempt to land on a metal-rich asteroid. Chance of IM-3 and Vestri launching in 2026: 50 percent.
16. Blue Ghost Mission 2
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander completed the first-ever fully successful commercial mission on the Moon’s surface last March. The next Blue Ghost mission is more ambitious, with a landing targeted for the far side of the Moon “as early as 2026,” Firefly says. The next mission actually consists of three spacecraft, with a Blue Ghost lander aiming for the lunar far side, a Firefly-built Elytra orbiter for data relay, and a European Space Agency (ESA) orbiter called Lunar Pathfinder.
This will be the first US mission to attempt a landing on the lunar far side, following two Chinese landers that touched down on the back side of the Moon in 2019 and 2024. Updates from Firefly suggest the company is still in the early stages of manufacturing flight hardware for Blue Ghost Mission 2, while an ESA website shows a target launch schedule no earlier than November 2026. Chance of Blue Ghost Mission 2 launching in 2026: 10 percent.
17. America’s first geosynchronous refueler
Astroscale, a company founded with the purpose of cleaning up space debris, has pivoted to pursuing the more lucrative market of satellite servicing. Many of the key technologies needed for space debris cleanup, such as rendezvous and proximity operations, are also applicable to Astroscale’s new focus. Astroscale launched a satellite last year to approach a derelict Japanese rocket in low-Earth orbit, marking the first time any mission has inspected a piece of space junk.
Astroscale’s next mission will go for another first: refueling a US military satellite above geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the Earth. Western analysts believe China completed the first geosynchronous satellite refueling mission in 2025, and Astroscale’s contract with the US Space Force will attempt to do the same. The most recent schedule available for this mission shows a launch in mid-2026. Chance of Astroscale’s refueler launching in 2026: 50 percent.
The Plato observatory’s 26 cameras.
Credit: ESA-SJM Photography
The Plato observatory’s 26 cameras. Credit: ESA-SJM Photography
18. Europe’s Plato mission
The European Space Agency’s next medium-class science mission, named for the Greek philosopher Plato, could become the most prolific planet hunter ever sent into space. Fitted with 26 ultra-sensitive cameras, Plato will search for exoplanets by detecting tiny dips in light as planets pass in front of other stars. Some estimates suggest Plato could discover several thousand to several tens of thousands of extrasolar worlds, doubling or tripling the number of exoplanets in the confirmed archive.
Plato is specifically designed to find Sun-Earth analogs, potentially habitable rocky planets around stars like the Sun. These are expected to be a small percentage of Plato’s total planet haul. Preparations for Plato’s launch appear to be going well. ESA said ground teams finished assembling the observatory in October, and Plato will spend the coming months in vibration, acoustic, and thermal vacuum testing. The mission has at least two months of schedule margin for its official launch date in December 2026. But given the launch is scheduled for so late in the year, there is a chance a minor delay could push the start of Plato’s mission into 2027. Chance of Plato launching in 2026: 60 percent.
19. Gaganyaan orbital test flight
India has lofty ambitions for its space program, including a heavy-lift rocket, a space station in low-Earth orbit, and eventually human landings on the Moon. The precursor to many of these objectives is Gaganyaan, India’s human spaceflight program. Gaganyaan has been in full-scale development since winning approval from the Indian government in 2018. The Gaganyaan program still has government backing, but India has a history of announcing unrealistic schedules for the spacecraft’s initial test flights.
The first uncrewed orbital test flight of the Gaganyaan capsule has been mere months away for the last five years. The first test flight is currently slated for the first quarter of 2026. India’s space agency has reported some progress in 2025, such as human-rating the capsule’s LVM3 launch vehicle, installation of the spacecraft’s propulsion system, and parachute tests. But it’s a good idea to be skeptical of any of India’s schedules until officials provide more meaningful updates. Chance of Gaganyaan-1 launching in 2026: 30 percent.
This is an exciting mission, but the most dramatic part of MMX’s journey will come after it arrives at Mars in 2027. MMX will attempt to land on the Martian moon Phobos up to two times and collect samples for a return to Earth. The mission is poised to begin with a launch in October to start its journey to Mars. The launch was previously set for 2024, but Japan’s space agency delayed it due to problems with the country’s new H3 rocket.
The H3 scored a series of successful flights until December, when it failed to deliver a Japanese navigation satellite to orbit. There’s still time for engineers to investigate the failure and return the H3 to flight before MMX’s planetary launch window in October, but the H3 failure introduced some doubt into a scheduled that seemed assured before last month. The fully integrated MMX spacecraft underwent environmental testing throughout 2025. MMX builds on Japan’s successful Hayabusa 2 mission, which brought specimens from an asteroid back to Earth in 2020. If all goes according to plan, samples from Phobos should be back on Earth in 2031. Chance of MMX launching in 2026: 80 percent.
Updated at 3:50 pm EST with correct number of Relativity Space engine tests.
Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.
