2025 spaceflight in photos: Blue Origin, SpaceX, two lunar landings and the Starliner return

A year of milestones — from two uncrewed lunar landings and the high‑profile return of Boeing's 'stuck' Starliner crew to major operational pushes by SpaceX and Blue Origin — 2025 saw a rapid increase in launch cadence, lunar activity and commercial space capability demonstrations.

Discovered 2025-12-19T10:40:35.838105-08:00 | 2025-12-19T10:40:35.838105-08:00

Briefing

What Hype is tracking

The commercial launch tempo accelerated materially in 2025, with SpaceX pushing high cadence (including its 125th Falcon 9 mission of the year and a Vandenberg annual record of 52 Falcon 9 launches), stressing launch infrastructure and supplier chains.
Blue Origin moved from prototype to production scale and national‑security timelines, opening manufacturing and factory capacity and advancing the Blue Ring spacecraft toward a 2026 government flight and its Lunar Plant 1/New Glenn factory development.
The year's operational milestones have direct defence and resilience implications: the Space Development Agency described 2025 as "almost a watershed year" while continuing to book Falcon 9 launches to expand its LEO transport layer (21-satellite mission booking).

Reported By

New Scientist spacecoastdaily.com Scientific American ESA keeptrack.space Space.com