Suddenly obsessed with space after Artemis II? Here are some exciting events to watch out for.

The Artemis II mission was inspiring, moving, occasionally funny and, more than anything, a reminder of how magical space exploration can be. As joyful as it was to see the crew splashdown safely in the Pacific Ocean last week, that was soon followed by the sobering realization that their record-breaking journey had come to an end.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing going on with space to be excited about.

In fact, we are in the midst of an extraordinary period of interplanetary progress that will redefine humankind’s relationship with the solar system.

These are some of the biggest reasons to keep your eyes on the skies in the near future.

What’s next for Artemis?

Although it was groundbreaking and inspiring in its own right, Artemis II was a test flight. Its primary objective was to allow NASA to try out the systems it will need as it pursues far more ambitious goals: putting humans back on the moon and, eventually, on Mars. The astronauts will tell us more about their experience when they hold their first press conference since returning to Earth on Thursday. One of the things they are bound to discuss is how their mission set the stage for the next one — and all the missions after that.

Artemis III, which is scheduled to launch in mid-2027, was originally intended to be the mission that brought astronauts back to the lunar surface, but NASA changed its plans earlier this year. Artemis III’s new mission will be to connect the Orion spacecraft with the lunar landing system that it’ll need to safely land on the moon’s surface, and Artemis IV will land on the moon.

Two companies, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, are developing their own lunar landers in a multibillion-dollar competition to be the one to put NASA astronauts back on the moon. Currently, NASA is planning to test “one or both” companies’ landers during the Artemis III mission.

Assuming all goes well, NASA is planning to launch Artemis IV on its return mission to the moon in early 2028. Artemis V is scheduled to go to the moon as well later that year. The agency is hoping that those missions will serve as a stepping stone to send humans to Mars at some point in the 2030s.

More moon exploration

NASA isn’t the only space agency with plans to explore the moon. China has launched a series of increasingly ambitious missions over the past decade as part of its Chang’e program, named after the Chinese goddess of the moon. Its next mission, Chang’e 7, is planned for the second half of this year. It will take four separate spacecraft —  an orbiter, a lander, a “hopping” probe and a rover — to conduct the first on-the-ground search for water (in the form of ice) on the moon. China has set a goal of putting its own astronauts on the moon by 2030. If they’re successful, they would be the first non-Americans to walk on the lunar surface in history.

Several private companies have also set their eyes on the moon, vying for the opportunity to become NASA’s partner in its future lunar missions. More than a dozen companies are developing spacecraft that could one day deliver supplies, scientific tools and technology for NASA astronauts on the moon. Blue Ghost, a lunar lander by Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, became the first commercial spacecraft to successfully land on the moon early last year. At least four more similar launches are planned before the end of 2026, including a second Blue Ghost landing.

Visits to other planets

Humankind is still many years away from traveling to any other planet in person, but robots are able to make those trips now. For example, Japan’s space agency is planning to launch a probe later this year that will land on Phobos, the largest of the two moons orbiting Mars. The probe will collect samples from the surface before returning to Earth. If successful, it will be the first time that material from the martian satellite has been brought back to our planet.

Another probe that’s being developed by the company Rocket Lab and a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is scheduled to launch as soon as this summer will be heading to Venus. The Venus Life Finder will send instruments into Venus’s toxic atmosphere to search for signs of organic molecules, which could be signs of life.

Later this year, the space probe BepiColombo is finally expected to settle into Mercury’s orbit, bringing its eight-year journey through the inner solar system to an end. Once it arrives, the probe will split into two orbiters that will send back data to shine new light on one of Earth’s least-understood neighbors.

Meeting meteors

A Chinese probe is currently hurtling toward a small asteroid orbiting the Earth known as a quasi-moon, with the expectation that it will arrive there this summer. Like Japan’s Mars probe, China’s spacecraft will send samples to Earth to help scientists understand more about the asteroid, which is believed to be a chunk of our moon that was blasted off by some sort of lunar impact.

Then, around November, a probe from the European Space Agency will reach the asteroid Dimorphos to study the aftermath of humankind’s first ever attempt to change the path of an object in space.

Dimorphos was struck by a NASA spacecraft in 2022 in a test of a new planetary defense strategy that could one day theoretically redirect an asteroid that poses a major threat to Earth. The new probe will provide data on the results of that test, which changed Dimorphos’s trajectory by more than 25 times its minimum requirement.

Brand-new views of the galaxy

Two powerful new telescopes are expected to provide unprecedented views of the cosmos within the next year or so. One is the Xuntian telescope from China’s space agency, currently scheduled to launch in late 2026. With a field of view that’s 350 times as wide as the Hubble Space Telescope’s, Xuntian will be able to photograph up to 40% of the sky over 10 years.

NASA is planning to launch its own telescope by May 2027. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named for the agency’s first chief astronomer, is designed to provide new insight into some of space’s biggest mysteries, including the nature of dark matter and essential questions about astrophysics.