Space calendar 2025: Here are the moments you wont want to miss

Though 2025 won't mark the return of astronauts into deep space as NASA had hoped, launchpads still will be scorching-hot from a procession of robotic spacecraft attempting to land on the moon. How many of these moon landings will succeed? Will the number top the two-ish (one of which made a heckuva comeback) last year? Giant commercial rockets, such as SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn, will likely also have several uncrewed orbital test launches as they iron out the kinks in their hardware. And while people await scientific missions to distant solar system destinations, a few probes will send home close-up pictures of planets as they snag gravitational boosts from flybys. Here's a round-up of space missions and cosmic events just around the bend. Bookmark this calendar and look for updates from Mashable throughout the year. SEE ALSO: NASA leader doubts Elon Musk will push Trump to axe moon rocket BepiColombo makes final Mercury flyby: Jan. 8 Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, but it's perhaps the most overlooked of the rocky worlds in the solar system. Hot and harder to reach than Saturn, it hasn't enjoyed the level of study that other worlds have. But BepiColombo, a joint mission of the European and Japanese space agencies, seeks to change that. The spacecraft makes its sixth and final flyby on Jan. 8 before returning to enter orbit around the planet in late 2026. Closest approach will take the spacecraft just 160 miles above the surface of Mercury. Mission controllers will release images of the event on Jan. 9. SpaceX tests upgraded Starship: Jan. 15 SpaceX is preparing to launch another uncrewed Starship test, this time with an upgraded spacecraft and 10 mock satellites to practice a payload deployment in space. This SpaceX launch would mark the seventh Starship test and feature a reused engine from the booster returned from the fifth test. The launch window opens at 4:00 p.m. CT. Tweet may have been deleted Two moon landers on one rocket: Ja