5 Final Space Missions to Watch in 2024: SpaceX, Blue Origin and More

As 2024 comes to a close, space companies around the globe show no signs of slowing down. Earlier this month, Blue Origin completed its 28th mission when its New Shepard spacecraft took off from West Texas and completed a ten-minute orbital flight with six civilians onboard. The passengers included aerospace engineer Emily Calandrelli, who became the 100th women to travel to space when the spacecraft passed the Kármán line—the internationally recognized barrier separating the Earth’s atmosphere from space—before landing back at Blue Origin’s site. The company isn’t done for the year just yet, as it is also gearing up for the maiden launch of its New Glenn rocket sometime in December.

Other major space launches last month included two back-to-back 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 Nov. 4 launched a defense satellite from its Tanegashima Space Center. Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, successfully launched satellites to monitor the Earth’s ionosphere the following day.

Here’s a look at some of the other notable space missions expected to launch before the end of the year.

Five space missions to watch in December 2024:

• Dec. 2: SpaceX launches a radio satellite for SiriusXM: A Falcon 9 rocket is expected to life off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center after the 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 tech company that has been working with the broadcasting corporation since 2000. Its SXM-8 satellite launched into space in 2021.
• Dec. 3: Arianespace helps an environmental data mission soar. French launch service provider Arianespace is gearing up to launch the Sentinel-1C satellite as part of a mission for the European Commission. The satellite, which will be launched by a Vega C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, France, will provide all-weather, day and night radar imagery of Earth’s surface to aid disaster response, urban planning and climate change research. It is part of Copernicus, the Earth observation portion of the E.U. Space Programme.
• Dec: 20: The ISRO’s space docking experiment. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is set to launch its Space Docking Experiment or SPADEX later this month from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre using PSLV launch vehicle. The mission will see two satellites separate and reunite in space, with the agency hoping this autonomous docking technology will eventually enable future missions that allow for the transfer of humans between spacecraft or the refueling of vehicles.
• TBD: Japan’s ispace shoots for the moon. Japanese company ispace is preparing for its second lunar exploration mission 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, deep space radiation probe and an art project in the form of a miniature red house. The mission, funded in part by JAXA, follows ispace’s failed first attempt in 2023.
• TBD: Watch out for Blue Origin’s maiden New Glenn launch. Blue Origin’s more than 300-foot-tall Blue Glenn rocket, which will carry a prototype of the company’s Blue Ring hardware into space for testing, is expected to take off from Cape Canaveral before the end of the year. In a promising sign that the maiden voyage is taking place soon, Blue Origin in November placed the rocket in a vertical position on its launch pad in preparation for a fire test.