As the year 2024 draws to a close, space companies around the world show no signs of slowing down. Earlier this month, Blue Origin completed its 28th mission when its New Shepard spacecraft lifted off from West Texas and completed a ten-minute orbit with six citizens on board. The passengers included space engineer Emily Calandrelli, who became the 100th woman in space when the spacecraft crossed the Kármán line—the world-famous barrier that separates Earth’s atmosphere from outer space—before returning to the Blue Origin base. The company isn’t over the year yet, as it prepares for the December launch of its new Glenn rocket.
Other major space launches last month included two return missions by Rocket Lab from New Zealand and Virginia, respectively, and SpaceX’s sixth Starship test. On the government side, JAXA, the Japanese space agency, on November 4 launched a defense satellite from its Tanegashima Space Center. The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, successfully launched satellites to monitor the Earth’s ionosphere the next day.
Here’s a look at some of the notable space missions expected to be launched before the end of the year.
Five space missions to watch in December 2024:
- December 2: SpaceX launches SiriusXM radio satellite: A Falcon 9 rocket is expected to launch from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center after Thanksgiving weekend, launching a radio satellite into orbit for SiriusXM. The SXM-9 satellite is the 10th digital audio radio satellite built for SiriusXM by Maxar Technologies, a space technology company that has worked with the broadcaster since 2000. Its SXM-8 satellite was launched into space in 2021.
- December 3: Arianespace helps environmental data mission increase. French launch service provider Arianespace is preparing to launch the Sentinel-1C satellite as part of a European Commission mission. The satellite, which will be launched on a Vega C rocket from the European Spaceport in Kourou, France, will provide all-weather, day-and-night radar imaging of the Earth’s surface to aid disaster response, urban planning and climate change research. It is part of Copernicus, the earth observation part of the EU Space Programme.
- Dis: 20: ISRO space probe test. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will launch the Space Docking Experiment or SPADEX later this month from the Indian Satish Dhawan Space Center using the PSLV launch vehicle. The mission will see the two satellites separate and rejoin in space, and the agency hopes that this autonomous docking technology will eventually enable future missions that allow the transfer of people between spacecraft or the recharging of vehicles.
- TBD: Japan’s ispace captures the moon. The Japanese company ispace is preparing for its second mission to explore the moon sometime in December. The mission will see ispace’s Resilience lunar lander launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and will carry items including a small rover, a deep space radiation probe and an art project in the form of a little red house. The mission, funded in part by JAXA, follows a failed first ispace attempt in 2023.
- TBD: Watch for Blue Origin’s first New Glenn launch. The 300-foot-tall Blue Origin rocket, which will carry a prototype of the company’s Blue Ring hardware into space for testing, is expected to lift off from Cape Canaveral before the end of the year. In a promising sign that the girl’s journey is imminent, Blue Origin in November placed the rocket in a vertical position on its launch pad in preparation for a test fire.
