From the moon’s landing to the air explosion and the long-awaited return of two NASA astronauts, March is a busy month for the space industry. On March 2, Texas-based Firefly Aerospace became the first company to land on the moon without falling. A few days later, another Texas-based space company’s intuitive machine tried the moon’s landing, but its mission was shortened when its spacecraft tilted and had no authority to perform.
Later this month, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who were trapped in the International Space Station (ISS) for nine months, will return home in SpaceX Dragon capsules. SpaceX also tested its Starship prototype on its eighth flight in March, which once again led to an explosion in the air.
April is expected to be equally exciting with freshly launched lineups like NASA, SpaceX, Roscosmos and Ula.
Here are five space missions to watch in April 2025:
April 1: SpaceX sends a staff member to learn about the poles of the earth. April will start to explode as SpaceX prepares to launch the FRAM2 mission, a four-person crew flight to explore the polar regions of the Earth. Originally scheduled to be launched on the Falcon 9 rocket at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the early hours of March 31 or April 1, Fram2 will see a crew member's Dragon Capsule Orbital orbit within three to five days. The mission will be led by cryptocurrency entrepreneur Chun Wang, while also on board with civilian astronauts Jannicke Mikkles, Eric Philips and Rabea Rogge. In addition to observing the polar regions of the Earth, FRAM2 will explore how space flight affects the human body and will capture the first human X-ray image in space.
April 8: A Soyuz rocket sends three astronauts to ISS. NASA astronaut Jonathan Kim will join Russian astronauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Aleksey Zubritsky for an eight-month stay at the International Space Station (ISS) as they conducted scientific research and maintained the station. They will be riding a Russian Soyuz rocket, planning to withdraw from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
April 13: NASA studies space weather. The Falcon 9 Rockets will launch NASA's tracer mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The spacecraft consists of two twin satellites designed to orbit the Earth to study magnetic reconnection, which happens when activity from the sun interacts with the Earth's magnetic field and causes space weather, such as particles hitting the Earth's atmosphere. Research on tracer is expected to help scientists prepare for the potential impact of this solar activity on Earth.
April 20: NASA's Lucy spacecraft flies are asteroids. A week after the Tracers launch, NASA will expect their Lucy spacecraft to fly over the main asteroid Donaldjohanson. Originally launched in 2021, Lucy is expected to visit 11 different asteroids over a 12-year journey to ultimately explore Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids and get information about the Solar System Group. Lucy's Donaldjohanson is a 3-mile-wide asteroid that will take place on April 20, a chance for a spacecraft to meet space rocks.
TBD: Ula's Vulcan launches U.S. Space Force mission. In April, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan Centauri rockets can also be seen launching the first of several U.S. space force missions. Vulcan Centaur is the successor to Ula's old rocket Atlas V.
