From missions to the Moon to an expedition to Mercury, 2026 promises to be an exciting year for space.
At the beginning of the year, four astronauts will orbit the Moon for the first time since the Apollo missions of the late 1960s. The objective is to begin testing the Orion spacecraft in which they will fly, preparing for a future moon landing.
Attention will also focus on China, which in the summer will take astronauts to some of the darkest areas of the Moon, looking for signs that life could one day thrive there.
The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch a mission to assess whether humanity can defend Earth from asteroids. It will also launch a probe into orbit to study the Earth’s magnetic field and launch a second mission into orbit around Mercury.
Some of the space missions to follow in 2026.
Four astronauts orbit the Moon on Artemis II
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2026 will be the “year of the Moon”, says Monica Grady, professor of planetary and space science at the Open University, in the United Kingdom.
There will be two major lunar missions to follow this year. The first is Artemis II, which will take three North American and one Canadian astronauts on a 10-day pass around the Moon.
Astronauts will test the vital systems of the Orion capsule in preparation for a future landing.
The astronauts will travel approximately 4,700 miles (more than 7,500 kilometers) to the far side of the Moon, where they will be able to see the Earth and the Moon through the capsule’s windows.
Grady emphasizes that it is an important moment, as it is the first time that astronauts have approached the Moon since the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s.
“It’s pretty significant,” Grady said. “And this is expected to be the final preparation mission to return astronauts to the Moon.”
China prepares its own version of the moon landing
The other lunar mission to generate expectations in 2026 is Chang’e 7, in which Chinese astronauts study the ball sul da Lua.
The mission will use a “hopper” spacecraft that will jump from illuminated areas to shadowed craters, looking for ice, water or “volatile matter”, according to a statement.
Tang Yuhua, deputy chief designer of the Chang’e 7 mission, told state media that finding ice at the Moon’s south pole could significantly reduce the cost and time needed to bring water from Earth on longer-duration missions to Mars and beyond.
China hopes the mission will lead to several technological advances, such as using smart robots to explore the Moon’s harsh polar regions.
It is also an opportunity for China to strengthen international relations. Beijing indicated that Chang’e 7 will carry six payloads from Egypt, Bahrain, Italy, Russia, Switzerland, Thailand and the International Lunar Observatory Association.
Impact Investigation for Planetary Defense
In autumn, ESA will investigate an asteroid to improve Earth’s defense response to future objects that could collide with the planet.
In 2024, ESA sent a launcher to study the impact site of an asteroid that the United States intentionally struck with a spacecraft in 2022. The launcher will arrive at the impact site somewhere in November to measure the size of the crater left by the ship on Dimorphos.
The mission is a follow-up to the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) from NASA, launched toward Dimorphos, a small moon that orbits an asteroid called Didymos.
The objective of this mission was to understand how effective launchers can be in protecting humans from objects heading towards Earth.
According to ESA, scientists will be able to use the new data from the Hera mission to improve asteroid diversion technology, if it is ever needed.
Measure the Earth’s magnetosphere
European scientists are preparing a mission for April or May that will take detailed images, in X-rays, of the Earth’s magnetic envelope.
The magnetosphere protects the Earth and everyone on it from gentle streams of charged particles, the so-called solar wind, coming from the Sun.
“Without the magnetosphere, life could not survive on Earth,” says ESA.
A mission ESA’s Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) will send a 3-meter-tall probe into orbit, equipped with onboard trackers and antennas. The vehicle will monitor how, where and when the solar wind interacts with our planet.
According to ESA, the SMILE mission will help scientists understand a gap in the solar system and keep technology and astronauts safe in the future.
During the mission, the probe will reach 121,000 kilometers above the North Pole, about a third of the way to the Moon. It will also collect up to 45 hours per orbit of continuous observations in soft X-rays and ultraviolet light.
Mission to Mercury
In 2026, orbiters from Europe and Japan will be inserted into Mercury’s orbit for the first time.
According to ESA, Mercury is the least explored planet in the solar system because it is difficult to bring objects so close to the Sun without being destroyed by its powerful gravitational pull.
The call BepiColombo has already sent some data to scientists in multiple passes since the initial launch in 2018. 2026, however, will be the first time the probes enter the planet’s orbit.
When both orbiters are captured, they will register information about the planet’s magnetic environment and its inner core. They will also make global maps of the surface.
The information that ESA will collect on Mercury “will shed light on the history of the entire solar system,” the agency says.
