The Space Coast is set for another busy year in 2025 with new moon missions, new spacecraft and the debut of a new rocket.

Meanwhile, NASA could see billionaire Jared Isaacman confirmed as its new administrator while prep continues for the Artemis II human spaceflight to orbit the moon in 2026.

Coming off a record 93 launches in 2024 among pads at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the Space Coast launch total in 2025 could climb past 100 with the continued frenetic pace set by SpaceX, an increase from United Launch Alliance and the debut of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.

Among the missions are at least four human spaceflights, including one with a new SpaceX Crew Dragon, three commercial lunar landers and the debut of Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spacecraft on a cargo mission to the International Space Station.

Here’s a rundown of the top space stories coming in 2025:

A new rocket: Jeff Bezos’ game of catchup to Elon Musk could get a big push with the debut launch of Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. The first launch could come soon with the Federal Aviation Administration approving its license at the end of 2024.

The 320-foot-tall rocket is set to launch from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 36. Similar to how SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets land, New Glenn has a first-stage booster designed for reusability and will attempt a landing in the Atlantic on the recovery ship Jacklyn, named for Bezos’ mother. The booster would then return for unloading at Port Canaveral in the company’s efforts to refly them up to 25 times.

Blue Origin needs two successful launches before it can compete for lucrative national security launches, but already has contracts to launch a pair of Mars-bound satellites for NASA as well as several commercial satellite missions.

A new Dragon: SpaceX is introducing a new Crew Dragon spacecraft for the Crew-10 mission to the ISS flying no earlier than March. It joins a fleet of four existing Dragons used for human spaceflight, which have since 2020 flown 15 times carrying 56 people to space.

SpaceX has at least four Crew Dragon flights with 16 more passengers planned for 2025.

The flight was delayed from a planned February launch to allow more time to prep the new spacecraft, which means a pair of NASA astronauts who have been on the ISS since last June will have to wait longer to get home. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived to the station on board Boeing’s Starliner, which was sent home without them because of safety concerns. NASA opted to set up their ride home with SpaceX instead, but that return with the Crew-9 mission also currently on board the ISS has to wait for Crew-10’s arrival.

Crew-10’s shuffle to March means the first human spaceflight of the year falls to the commercial Fram2 mission, which would mark the first time humans have flown on a polar orbital mission. After Fram2 and Crew-10, SpaceX plans to fly up the fourth commercial flight for Axiom Space to the ISS. Axiom-4 will see the return of former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson leading astronaut customers from India, Poland and Hungary for a two-week stay on board.

Next up would be Crew-11 in the summer while NASA has held off on assigning a crew rotation flight for late 2025, which could go to SpaceX or possibly Boeing’s Starliner if NASA certifies that spacecraft.

Back to the moon: No, not humans, yet, but three commercial companies have early 2025 plans to send up lunar landers.

Two of them are actually sharing a rocket when a SpaceX Falcon 9 aims to lift off from KSC during a six-day window in mid-January. One will be the Blue Ghost moon lander from Firefly Aerospace trying its hand for its first mission under NASA’s Commercial Launch Payload Services (CLPS) program carrying 10 instruments for NASA. Along for the ride is a mission for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) with commercial partner ispace trying for a second lunar landing run with its Hakuto-R Mission-2 lander. The first ispace landing attempt in 2023 failed.

The third planned lunar landing attempt will be from Intuitive Machines, which managed a partially successful touchdown in 2024 with its Nova-C lander, although it tipped on its side. The follow-up mission will also feature a Nova-C lander featuring NASA’s PRIME-1 drill headed for the moon’s south pole. Also flying on that mission is the Lunar Trailblazer satellite that will orbit the moon looking for water.

What about Artemis II? In late 2024, NASA announced another delay for the first human spaceflight of the Artemis program with the Artemis II mission to fly around but not land on the moon. Now pushed to no later than April 2026, a lot of moving parts are in play to beat that target launch date.

The core stage of the Space Launch System rocket went vertical at KSC’s Vehicle Assembly Building and stacking of it along the two solid rocket boosters will continue in early 2025 with the expected arrival of the Orion spacecraft by April or May.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen would become the first humans to fly to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. A successful flight aims to set up the Artemis III mission by mid-2027 that looks to return humans, including the first woman, to the lunar surface for the first time in more than half a century.

A new space station: The International Space Station has a limited lifeline with NASA’s plans to deorbit it after 2030. One company, Axiom Space, has a plan to send up modules to the ISS that will then be able to detach and become its own commercial space station by 2028, but another company, Vast, has plans for a free-flying station this year.

Vast announced a deal with SpaceX to launch its small station called Haven-1 atop a Falcon 9 into low-Earth orbit as soon as this year. The module has a habitable area about the size of a moving truck. Crewed mission using SpaceX Dragon capsules would follow.

Vast has also announced it will compete with Axiom Space for future commercial visits to the ISS as it tries to nail down its processes for commercial space station flights.

New NASA head: President-elect Donald Trump has nominated two-time space traveler Isaacman to take over the reins of NASA from Bill Nelson. Having flown twice to space courtesy of SpaceX, and with plans to fly up to two more times including the first human spaceflight of the in-development Starship, Isaacman has close ties to Musk and will have to convince the Senate during his confirmation hearing that he would be impartial when guiding the agency.

Even so, the direction of NASA’s Artemis program could shift from the current plans that rely on the SLS rocket carrying Orion. Future Artemis plans feature a larger version of the SLS, and work will continue in 2025 to finish construction of the larger mobile launcher 2 designed to support those rockets with their first launch not slated until Artemis IV no earlier than 2028.

Mystery Project Hinton: In late 2024, Space Florida, the state’s aerospace finance and development authority, approved up to $65 million in state funds for what it forecast to be a $1.8 billion launch site project in Cape Canaveral known as “Project Hinton.”

While it did not identify the company, construction is slated to begin as early as January and last 18 to 24 months with the project expected to bring 600 jobs with average wages of $93,000 a year.

The project falls in line with SpaceX’s plans to build out Starship support infrastructure that could support its plans for two launch towers on the Space Coast. One would be at KSC’s Launch Complex 39-A adjacent its existing pad for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, and one at Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 37 taking over the pad that saw the final ULA Delta IV Heavy liftoff in 2024.

Both sites are under environmental impact studies that could be complete this year setting the stage for construction.

New cargo spacecraft: Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser, which looks like a mini space shuttle, is primed to become the next commercial company to deliver cargo to the ISS. The company won a NASA contract to become the third U.S.-based resupply provider on top of SpaceX with its cargo Dragon and Northrop Grumman with its Cygnus spacecraft.

The Dream Chaser named Tenacity arrived to KSC last year and was originally tapped to be the second customer to fly on ULA’s new Vulcan rocket, but because of prep delays was pushed down ULA’s launch manifest into 2025.

ULA is still awaiting the certification of its Vulcan rocket from the Space Force so it can fly national security missions that are already lined up for liftoff, so just when Vulcan will launch Tenacity remains up in the air.

The Dream Chaser is a cargo version of what was originally pitched to be a human-rated spacecraft and the company plans to pursue that version in the future. For now, it will take on cargo resupply duties, and bring to NASA the only spacecraft that can fly payloads right back to place it launched from, as it will just like the space shuttle, come in for landings at the runway at KSC.

Amazon satellites galore: While SpaceX continues to send up dozens of Starlink launches a year, it could see competition from Amazon begin to ramp up in 2025. Amazon has a 3,232-satellite constellation called Project Kuiper planned to be in place by 2028, but half of them need to be launched before summer 2026 to comply with license requirements set by the Federal Communications Commission.

To achieve that, Amazon secured contracts for 80 launches initially from among ULA, Blue Origin and Arianespace, but since augmented with a few from SpaceX, but only two test satellites have launched so far.

“We expect to begin deploying our satellite constellation in early 2025 and rolling out service later in the year,” the company states on its website.

To knock out that many missions, it’s working with ULA to build out a second rocket integration site in Cape Canaveral for Vulcan, which will handle the majority of those launches. The company also invested in a satellite processing facility at Kennedy Space Center to ramp up the launch cadence.

ULA has said it has as many as 20 launches on its 2025 manifest including potentially all eight Atlas V rockets set aside for Amazon before it switches to using up to 38 more missions using Vulcan through 2028.

Including ULA, most of the Amazon flights will come on the Space Coast with Blue Origin’s contract getting 12 launches initially with an additional 15 potentially to be ordered. SpaceX to date has an order for three launches. Arianespace, which flies out of South America, has a contract for 18 missions on its Ariane 6 rocket, which has only flown once.