The house trade is bracing for one more packed month after a busy February. On Feb. 26, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched a number of missions from Florida’s Kennedy House Heart, together with a lunar lander made by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, a NASA lunar orbiter and a robotic probe made by AstroForge, an asteroid mining startup. On Feb. 25, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin launched its tenth house tourism mission, sending six passengers to suborbital space. And on Feb. 22, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched a Starlink mission from California, bringing the overall variety of Starlink satellites in orbit previous 8,000.
March will deliver each celestial and human spaceflight occasions. A lunar eclipse on March 14 will flip the moon reddish orange in a “blood moon” seen throughout the Western Hemisphere. Two Mars gravity assists are anticipated, and NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are lastly set to come back residence from an prolonged keep on the Worldwide House Station.
Listed below are 5 house missions to look at in March 2025:
March 1: NASA’s Jupiter probe will get a gravity help. NASA’s Europa Clipper will fly 550 miles above Mars, utilizing the planet’s gravity to realize pace and alter course towards its ultimate vacation spot, Jupiter’s moon Europa. The spacecraft, launched final October on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, goals to review Europa’s potential to assist life. It’s anticipated to succeed in Jupiter’s orbit by 2030. One other gravity help is deliberate for December 2026, when the Clipper flies previous Earth.
March 2: NASA does double obligation. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will carry off from California’s Vandenberg House Power Base, carrying two NASA tasks: The SPHEREx house telescope will map the sky in infrared to review the universe’s formation. The PUNCH mission, consisting of 4 small satellites, will monitor the Solar’s corona because it transitions into photo voltaic wind.
March 3: SpaceX’s eighth Starship check. Initially set for February, SpaceX has moved its eighth Starship check flight to March 3. The final check in January resulted in failure when the upper-stage capsule exploded mid-flight as a consequence of propellant leaks. This time, SpaceX will once more try to catch the Tremendous Heavy booster with its “chopstick” catch system, a maneuver it has efficiently accomplished twice. The mission may even carry 4 dummy Starlink simulators to follow satellite tv for pc deployment.
March 12: ESA’s Mars flyby. NASA’s Europa Clipper isn’t the one spacecraft flying by Mars this month—the European House Company’s Hera mission may even get a gravity help when it passes by the planet on March 12. Launched final fall, Hera plans to spend the subsequent yr touring to an asteroid that was impacted by a NASA mission in 2022 working towards asteroid deflection strategies, the place it’s going to collect data on the Didymos asteroid system.
March 12: NASA astronauts lastly get a journey residence. NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will lastly return to Earth after an eight-month keep on the ISS. They have been launched to the house station by Boeing (BA)’s Starliner spacecraft final June. Initially set for a one-week keep, they remained as a consequence of Starliner points that required an uncrewed return. On March 12, NASA’s Crew-10 mission will arrive on the ISS aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule for a handover. Just a few days later, the spacecraft will deliver Williams and Wilmore residence, together with NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Aleksandr Gorbunov, who’re scheduled to return to Earth on the identical journey after a six-month keep in house.
