What space missions and events are you most excited about for this year?
Whether we’re talking about Artemis II—the first crewed lunar mission since the early 1970s—or the launch of NASA’s latest “flagship” astrophysics mission, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, or nail-biting test flights of SpaceX’s revolutionary Starship mega-rocket, this year should have no shortage of thrilling milestones in space science and exploration.
This article highlights many of the most notable space events and missions 2026 has in store, but it’s far from comprehensive—and it includes no feedback from you, the reader.
So consider this an invitation: What are you most excited about in space this year? Is it something from the article, or something else entirely? Or maybe you’re not excited about any of it, because your personal favorite project isn’t launching any time soon?
Feel free to chime in. We welcome your engagement and discussion.
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I get "excited" (and not in a good way) about any space exploration that involves a crew.
Sending humans is a total waste of taxpayer money that would be much better spent on the probes, telescopes, etc. that all the other posts mention.
Then again we can only hope that Musk and Bezos will spend their own money to get to Mars (and stay there under ground dodging radiation). Sadly, they will get federal funds that would go to probes from which we would learn so much more.
Then again trying to populate Mars would teach us that Earth is our only viable home in the solar system.
I am excited about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It will be a great addition to fundamental research after the JWST. If it tells us whether dark energy is real or conjectured, that would be great. If it is real and explains its mysterious nature, that would be a bonus.
Dark Sky Preservation! is My Passion. It's Everywhere in the News, and it is all about time, all about space! Did you see the new DarkSky One car at the Detroit Auto Show?
I was digging for artificial light radiance levels, sqm readings, and more when I caught YOUR FB post with mention of dark sky events and thought I would take a look to use for our wvbi.net community calendar/darkskyevent calendar, which I fill each month.
Before I go on about that, a line in the article caught my eye, " It’s not inaccurate to think of the heavens as a clockwork apparatus above our head.' Which, of course, brought an image of a man walking around under the ecliptic with a pocket watch on his head. The Joke: Why did people stop using the night sky to tell time? Because it was easier to wear a watch.
Why was I digging for those numbers? I'm the media contact for the Beaver Island State Wildlife Research Area International Dark Sky Sanctuary. Spent the last 91 moons or so, enjoying the awe and wonder in the skies where I live, in a Bortle Class 2 Dark Sky. Where I can see the Milky Way and Messier objects with the naked eye, planets, and all the other magic in space.
Filled that space in time, collecting info and compiling the 100 or so pages of documentation to convince Dark Sky International that our area could be designated as a "sanctuary."
Naturally, I'm excited about the now widespread awareness of dark sky preservation and the respectful displays of scientific resources, and I hope we have a future filled with stars and wonder and awe.
So, I would love a comprehensive article about the scientific facts it takes to become designated and officially by the science, a "dark sky place" Many writers and medias are not getting it right in the details with vocabulary and such. Of course, I'd love to be asked for any minor assistance I could provide, perhaps even images.
It's a Journey through Space all right, to become a truly dark, dark sky place.
By the Way, I utilize, with permission, images and facts from EarthSky.org for limited use on our dark sky event community calendar. I will use and be grateful for the one you have created, since yours is one of the few to give dates a few months out.
I thank you so much for your time and consideration!
I can't wait for the Dragonfly (NASA) program to start. We have always talked about Mars and Jupiter's moons, but Saturn has been left out Its like the middle child that gets no attention, but the Dragonfly mission would help shed light on Titan, one of its moons. I know we still have a few years, but its coming up close and I am still excited for it!
I think the exploration of Venus is maximally important due to its being the twin Earth, as some scholars say. It's come to understand if Venus can be terraformed through a massive injection of hydrogen taken out of asteroids, while moving Venus away from its current orbit so as to move it to the Earth's, in one of the Lagrange points. Impossible, notwithstanding feasible. What's the core of such a mission? The possibility of setting a perfectly functioning quantum computer, scalable, with high fidelity and not prone to noise, so that it can simulate a classical dynamical system, like a planet revolving around the sun, cracking the same amount of data, or more than the data, processed by the latter (Venus).
I can't wait for the Roman observatory to launch. This telescope has such a weird and interesting backstory (it reuses parts from a retired NRO satellite) and will do such exciting things for astronomy!
I would love to see the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launch this year, I think it'll bring us some really cool science. I'm also particularly excited for the Hera mission's arrival at Didymos--I watched NASA's DART spacecraft slam into it live a few years ago, and I desperately want to know more about how that changed the asteroid!
I'm most excited about Japan's mission to the Martian moon Phobos. I love that it's named after the god of fear and that it's so irregularly shaped. Hope to hear more about this one in the new year.
