Six Space Missions to Watch in 2026 — From Artemis II to Commercial Lunar Landers

Certain years stand out in the history of human spaceflight — 1957, 1961 and 1969 — when Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin’s orbital flight and Apollo 11’s lunar landing transformed what humanity could do off Earth. While 2026 may not join that exclusive list, the coming year promises an unusually busy and consequential slate of missions: lunar flights, a new commercial station, India’s human-spaceflight tests, small but ambitious science probes, commercial lunar landers and next-generation telescopes.

Pandora: A Small Probe With Big Goals

One of the smallest missions that could have outsized scientific impact is the Pandora spacecraft, a compact exoplanet hunter designed to probe the atmospheres of distant worlds. Pandora is tiny by space-mission standards — about 17 inches across and weighing roughly 716 pounds — and inexpensive, with a mission cost near $20 million versus the James Webb Space Telescope’s multibillion-dollar price tag. Its nominal lifetime is about one year, during which it will apply a refined version of the transit technique used to discover thousands of exoplanets.

The transit method detects a planet when it crosses in front of its star and causes a tiny dip in starlight. Pandora will go further than many survey telescopes by analyzing the spectrum of starlight that passes through a planet’s atmosphere during a transit. That spectral fingerprint can reveal molecules such as water, methane and carbon dioxide — not proof of life, but signposts for worlds worth a closer look.

India’s Gaganyaan Program: Stepping Toward Crewed Flight

For decades, orbital human spaceflight belonged to the United States, the Soviet Union (now Russia) and, later, China. In 2026 India is poised to take a major step forward. The uncrewed Gaganyaan-1 mission — flying as early as January on a human-rated HLV Mk3 (HLVM3) — will test systems and carry a humanoid test device named Vyomitra to record forces, vibrations and other conditions that would affect astronauts.

Gaganyaan-1 is the first of three planned uncrewed demonstrations before a crewed flight is attempted, with India targeting its first crewed mission (with a four-person crew of vyomanauts) as early as 2027. The crew module is compact — roughly the habitable volume of an SUV — and the program represents a milestone for the world’s most populous nation as it joins the ranks of countries capable of launching humans into orbit.

Artemis II: Humans Farther From Earth Than Decades

Probably the biggest headline of 2026 will be NASA’s Artemis II. The mission will carry four crew members — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch and Jeremy Hansen — aboard the Orion spacecraft launched on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Orion’s development costs exceeded $20 billion, while SLS costs topped $24 billion.

Artemis II is planned as a roughly 10-day translunar mission that will send its crew farther from Earth than anyone has traveled in decades. The flight will not land on the moon or remain in lunar orbit; instead it will loop behind the moon and use lunar gravity to slingshot back to Earth. The spacecraft is expected to travel about 4,700 miles beyond the moon’s far side, allowing dramatic photos of Earth and the moon together from an unprecedented distance. The mission also marks symbolic firsts: the first woman and the first person of color to make a lunar transit, and the first non-U.S. citizen on such a mission.

Commercial Low-Earth-Orbit: Vast’s Haven-1 And The Post-ISS Era

The International Space Station (ISS) has been continuously occupied for 25 years, but the partner nations plan to retire it by the end of this decade. NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development program (CLD) is encouraging private replacements, and one of the earliest contenders is Vast’s Haven-1.

Haven-1 — a single bus-sized module providing about 45 cubic meters of habitable volume — aims to launch as early as May 2026 and host a four-person crew roughly a month after arrival. The module focuses on livability, with private sleeping quarters, high-speed internet, a communal dining area and a large domed window. Initial crew stays will be short (about two weeks), but Vast plans to expand the station with additional modules and grow both lab capacity and commercial opportunities through 2030.

Boeing’s Starliner: A Critical Uncrewed Test

NASA’s commercial crew program initially funded two providers: Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. SpaceX has flown crewed missions reliably since 2020; Starliner’s progress has been more troubled. Starliner finally carried its first crew in mid-2024 but an extended mission and thruster anomalies raised safety concerns.

After months of fixes, Boeing is scheduled to fly an uncrewed Starliner mission to the ISS in April 2026 to demonstrate the vehicle’s readiness to resume crewed flights. NASA and Boeing have also agreed to modify the original crew-flight contract, reducing the firm number of crewed missions from six to four, with two additional flights remaining optional and contingent on performance and the future needs of low-Earth orbit operations as the ISS approaches retirement.

Lunar Rovers: FLIP Now, FLEX Later

The United States has devoted much of its recent rover effort to Mars, but lunar surface robotics will return in 2026. Astrobotic (Pittsburgh) and Astrolab (California) plan to deliver FLIP (FLEX Lunar Innovation Program) to the Nobile Crater near the moon’s south pole around July. FLIP is a golf-cart-sized rover weighing more than half a ton, able to carry about 110 pounds of cargo and equipped with caster-mounted wheels for tight zero-point turns and an infrared guidance system for semi-autonomous navigation.

FLIP is paired with plans for a much larger FLEX rover (Flexible Logistics and Exploration), a roughly six-foot-tall vehicle designed to haul several thousand pounds of payload and ferry two astronauts across the lunar surface. FLEX targets a 2028 launch window to align with NASA’s hopes for Artemis surface operations by the end of the decade.

Commercial Lunar Landers And The Race For A Lander Contract

Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander, which could launch on the New Glenn rocket as early as January 2026, is designed to deliver cargo — and potentially crew — to the lunar south pole. In 2021 NASA awarded SpaceX about $2.89 billion to adapt Starship as the Artemis III crewed lander, but repeated Starship test setbacks and schedule uncertainty have led NASA’s interim leadership to reopen competition, inviting bidders such as Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin to propose alternatives.

A successful Blue Moon landing would be strategically significant for both the company and NASA as partners seek reliable, competitive options to support sustained lunar operations.

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: A Wide-Field Observatory

Late in 2026, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope — a roughly $4 billion mission — may depart for a deep-space vantage point roughly one million miles from Earth. From that stable position it will conduct wide-field surveys for exoplanets, map the structure of the Milky Way, and probe the nature of dark energy — the mysterious force driving the universe’s accelerating expansion.

Measured against the 13.8-billion-year span of cosmic history, any single year is a blink. But if these plans proceed on schedule, 2026 could be another unusually consequential chapter in humanity’s exploration of space.

Contact: Write to Jeffrey Kluger at jeffrey.kluger@time.com.