Top 10 Space Missions and Launches Defining 2026

SpaceX's 2026 Starship testing campaign centres on the V3 variant — a third-generation redesign incorporating upgraded Raptor 3 engines, enhanced avionics, and a refined reusable heat shield. Flight 12, which launched on May 22, 2026, was the first suborbital test of Starship V3. The Super Heavy booster executed a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, while the Starship upper stage completed its trajectory and splashed down in the Indian Ocean, demonstrating improved guidance precision compared to earlier flights. Flight 13, tentatively scheduled for late June 2026, is targeting an orbital attempt contingent on Flight 12 data review. The scale of SpaceX's 2026 launch ambition is without precedent in the history of rocketry. The company is targeting more than 120 orbital-class missions across its full fleet in 2026 — approximately one launch every three days — with Falcon 9 forming the backbone and Starship intended to absorb the heaviest payload requirements. Starship stands 122 metres tall, the largest rocket ever constructed, and generates 16.7 million pounds of thrust from 33 Raptor engines in its first stage. For NASA's Artemis programme, Starship's trajectory matters enormously. Starship is the designated Human Landing System (HLS) for Artemis III, meaning it must demonstrate orbital propellant transfer — a first in spaceflight history — before crew can land on the Moon. The 2026 V3 testing campaign is building the technical and regulatory confidence base required to authorise that mission. Beyond Artemis, SpaceX has announced commercial Starship lunar cargo missions targeting 2027-2028, and the company's long-term Mars architecture depends entirely on V3-or-later hardware meeting its reusability and mass-fraction targets.

The Martian Moons eXploration mission, developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency with contributions from NASA, CNES, and DLR, is scheduled to launch during the November-December 2026 Mars launch window. MMX will travel to Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons, collect at least 10 grams of surface material, and return those samples to Earth in 2031 — making it the first-ever sample return from the Mars system and one of the most scientifically consequential missions in planetary science history. Phobos is an enigmatic body. Its origin remains fiercely debated: it may be a captured carbonaceous asteroid, or it may be debris ejected from Mars's surface by a giant impact billions of years ago. Distinguishing between these hypotheses has profound implications for understanding Mars's early history, the delivery of water and organics to the inner Solar System, and the feasibility of using Phobos as a waystation for human Mars missions. MMX's scientific payload includes the MEGANE gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer (NASA), the OROCHI wide-angle camera, the TENGOO telescopic camera, the LIDAR altimeter, and an internationally contributed seismometer package. MMX will spend approximately three years in the Mars system before departing for Earth. During that time it will also conduct a brief reconnaissance of Deimos, Mars's smaller moon. The spacecraft has a launch mass of approximately 4,000 kilograms and uses a novel sample collection system developed from lessons learned in JAXA's successful Hayabusa2 mission, which returned asteroid samples in 2020. The mission's 5-year round trip makes it the longest-duration sample return mission ever attempted, and its success would firmly establish Japan as the world's premier practitioner of robotic sample return science.

ESA's Hera spacecraft, launched in October 2024, is scheduled to arrive at the Didymos-Dimorphos binary asteroid system in November 2026 — approximately one month earlier than originally planned due to trajectory optimisation. Hera is the European follow-up to NASA's DART mission, which deliberately impacted Dimorphos on September 26, 2022, altering its orbital period around Didymos by 33 minutes. While DART proved that kinetic impact deflection works, it left critical questions unanswered: How large is the crater? How much mass was ejected? What is Dimorphos's internal structure? Hera will answer all of these. The spacecraft has a mass of 1,128 kilograms and carries a suite of advanced instruments including a wide-angle camera, a thermal infrared imager, an asteroid framing camera, and the PALT lidar altimeter. Crucially, Hera also carries two CubeSat companions deployed once in the Didymos system: Milani, which will conduct a detailed mineral survey of both asteroids' surfaces, and Juventas, which will perform the first-ever radar sounding of an asteroid's interior — a technique capable of mapping internal voids and structural weaknesses. The scientific significance of Hera's work extends well beyond satisfying curiosity. Planetary defence requires not just the ability to deflect an asteroid but the ability to predict the deflection outcome with enough confidence to avoid an overcorrection. Hera's detailed characterisation of the DART crater, the ejecta plume structure, and Dimorphos's bulk density will calibrate the models that planetary defence agencies worldwide will use for any future threat response. The European Space Agency invested approximately 363 million euros in Hera, reflecting the strategic value of planetary defence capability for Europe and the broader international community.

Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 lander — built in the Endurance configuration — is targeting a launch no earlier than September 2026 as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme. The lander is designed to deliver up to 6,600 pounds (3,000 kilograms) of cargo to the lunar surface, making it the highest-capacity commercial lander attempted to date. Its primary mission will carry a slate of NASA scientific instruments and technology demonstration payloads selected to characterise the lunar environment ahead of crewed Artemis surface missions. Blue Moon Mark 1 is the result of nearly a decade of development dating to Jeff Bezos's public introduction of the lander concept in May 2019. The vehicle uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propulsion — the same propellant combination as NASA's Space Shuttle main engines — which provides the highest specific impulse of any chemical propellant pair and allows for efficient trans-lunar injection and powered descent. The precision landing system targets a circular touchdown zone of approximately 100 metres, meeting the requirements for safe surface cargo delivery without pre-surveyed landing pads. Blue Moon's significance extends well beyond its first flight. The Mark 1 variant is explicitly the pathfinder for Blue Moon Mark 2, the crewed variant under development as Blue Origin's alternative Human Landing System for Artemis missions beyond Artemis III. If Mark 1 successfully demonstrates precision landing and payload deployment in 2026, Blue Origin gains the flight heritage that underpins its HLS contract ambitions. The CLPS programme, which funds both Blue Origin and competitors including Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, represents NASA's strategic bet that commercial competition will drive lunar logistics costs down by an order of magnitude compared to government-operated systems.

BepiColombo, the joint ESA-JAXA mission to Mercury, is scheduled to achieve Mercury orbital insertion on November 21, 2026 — 11 months later than originally planned due to a thruster anomaly discovered in September 2024 that required revised trajectory planning. The delay does not affect the mission's scientific objectives. BepiColombo launched on October 20, 2018, and has spent 7.5 years navigating the gravitational complexities of the inner Solar System, executing flybys of Earth, Venus (twice), and Mercury (six times) to shed velocity and fall into a stable Mercury orbit. The spacecraft configuration is unique in spaceflight history. Three distinct modules travel together: the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) providing propulsion and power during transit, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO, built by ESA) designed for detailed surface and exosphere science, and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio, built by JAXA) focused on the planet's anomalously large and active magnetic field. Once the MTM is jettisoned at arrival, the MPO and Mio will separate into independent elliptical orbits — two observatories working in concert around a single planet. Mercury is the least-explored terrestrial planet. NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, which orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015, revealed a world with unexpected volatile abundances, a complex crater history, and a magnetic field that punches well above its weight for a body its size. BepiColombo's more capable instrument suite — including the MERTIS mid-infrared spectrometer, the MIXS X-ray spectrometer, and JAXA's PWI plasma wave instrument — will probe these mysteries in far greater detail. Understanding Mercury is essential for testing models of planetary formation in the innermost zone of protoplanetary discs, with direct implications for understanding exoplanetary systems elsewhere in the galaxy.

China's Chang'e 7 mission, scheduled for launch in August 2026, represents the most complex robotic lunar mission China has ever attempted. The spacecraft comprises four distinct modules: an orbiter, a relay satellite, a lander, and a uniquely novel hopping rover capable of propulsive short-range jumps into permanently shadowed craters — the only way to directly investigate the ice-rich regions hidden from sunlight for billions of years. The landing target is the illuminated rim of Shackleton crater near the lunar south pole at approximately 89 degrees south latitude, the same region being surveyed for future Artemis surface missions. Chang'e 7 carries 21 scientific instruments in total, including six contributed by international partners from France, Switzerland, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Bahrain. This international payload complement reflects China's strategy of building diplomatic relationships through space collaboration while simultaneously advancing its own capabilities. The primary scientific objectives are characterising the distribution and concentration of water ice in permanently shadowed regions, mapping the thermal and radiation environment at the south pole, and conducting seismic measurements of the lunar interior. The mission's strategic context is as important as its science. Chang'e 7 is the site-survey precursor for the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a permanent facility that China and Russia have formally committed to establishing at the lunar south pole by the early 2030s. By identifying the optimal landing zone for ILRS, assessing accessible water ice deposits that could support in-situ resource utilisation, and testing the hopping rover's precision mobility, Chang'e 7 directly advances China's goal of having an operational presence at the south pole before NASA's Artemis programme establishes a crewed foothold. The geopolitical stakes of the lunar south pole — rich in water ice, solar power, and crater-rim elevation — make Chang'e 7 one of the most consequential missions of 2026.

ESA's PLATO mission — Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars — is scheduled to launch in December 2026 aboard an Ariane 6 rocket, bound for the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point approximately 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. PLATO is distinguished by its unprecedented multi-telescope architecture: 26 cameras arranged in four overlapping groups observe simultaneously, providing photometric precision at a field-of-view scale that no single large telescope can achieve. This configuration allows PLATO to monitor more than 200,000 stars continuously, searching for the telltale brightness dips of transiting exoplanets. PLATO's primary science goal goes beyond simple planet detection. By simultaneously measuring stellar oscillations — the natural acoustic modes that make stars ring like bells — PLATO can determine the ages and masses of host stars with unprecedentedly high precision. This enables accurate characterisation of exoplanet radii, densities, and ultimately habitability assessments that previous missions like Kepler and TESS could not achieve. The mission specifically targets Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars, the category most likely to host environments compatible with life as we understand it. PLATO has a spacecraft mass of approximately 2,300 kilograms and a deployed solar panel wingspan of around 9 metres. The 26 cameras are divided into 24 normal cameras (each with a 1-degree field of view) and 2 fast cameras (used for bright stars requiring rapid readout). ESA estimates that PLATO will discover hundreds to thousands of exoplanets over its nominal 4-year mission, including dozens of Earth-sized planets in habitable zones. The mission represents Europe's flagship contribution to exoplanet science for the 2030s, complementing NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope's atmospheric characterisation capabilities.

Astrobotic's Griffin Mission One is scheduled to launch no earlier than July 2026 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Griffin is a medium-class commercial lunar lander designed to deliver payloads in the 1,100-pound (500-kilogram) range to the lunar surface, significantly larger than Astrobotic's earlier Peregrine lander, which suffered a propulsion failure in January 2024 and never achieved lunar landing. Griffin Mission One's primary payload is Astrolab's FLEX (Flexible Logistics and Exploration) rover — a 1,500-kilogram modular vehicle designed for payload transport and extended traverses on the lunar surface. The mission is funded under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme, which provides launch and mission funding in exchange for guaranteed payload delivery services. If successful, Griffin Mission One would be the first demonstration of a commercial mid-class lunar lander fully completing its objectives — a milestone the CLPS programme has sought since its 2018 inception. The Peregrine failure and Intuitive Machines' IM-1 mission (which landed but tipped on its side in February 2024) underscore how technically demanding precision lunar landing remains. Astrobotic's Griffin lander stands approximately 6 metres tall and uses a throttleable methane/liquid oxygen engine for powered descent — a propellant combination chosen partly for its potential in-situ resource utilisation compatibility with future missions. The company has contracted payload slots to both NASA and commercial customers, demonstrating that demand for lunar cargo services is real and growing. Astrolab's FLEX rover, designed to operate for up to one year on the lunar surface, represents an additional commercial layer — a robot-as-a-service model that could underpin a broader commercial lunar economy. Together, Griffin and FLEX constitute the most commercially significant lunar mission of 2026 after Blue Moon.

In early 2026, NASA formalised its commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) development strategy by maintaining active partnerships with both Axiom Space and Vast Space — the two companies furthest along in developing private orbital stations to replace the International Space Station, which is planned for deorbit in 2030. Axiom Space is developing a multi-modular station beginning with its Payload Power Thermal (PPT) module, initially planned to attach to the ISS before operating independently. Vast Space is developing Haven-1, a single-module commercial station targeted for a 2027 SpaceX Falcon 9 launch, and the larger Haven-2 architecture (a nine-module station) on a longer horizon. NASA awarded Commercial LEO Destination (CLD) contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to both companies as part of a multi-vendor strategy designed to prevent monopoly pricing in LEO access after ISS retirement. In 2026, both companies are advancing crew training, hardware fabrication, and launch vehicle integration. Vast's Haven-1 will fly four-person crews on SpaceX Dragon under a commercial mission contract, while Axiom has flown four private astronaut missions to ISS since 2022, establishing operational procedures for commercial crew management. The strategic significance of these partnerships for 2026 is architectural rather than operational. The decisions made now about module design, life-support redundancy, and commercial payload capacity will determine whether a functional commercial LEO ecosystem exists when ISS splashes down. If Haven-1 launches successfully in 2027 and Haven-2 follows by 2030, the transition from government-operated to commercial space station infrastructure will be the most consequential institutional shift in human spaceflight since the Shuttle programme's inception in the 1970s.

SpaceX's 2026 Starship testing campaign centres on the V3 variant — a third-generation redesign incorporating upgraded Raptor 3 engines, enhanced avionics, and a refined reusable heat shield. Flight 12, which launched on May 22, 2026, was the first suborbital test of Starship V3. The Super Heavy booster executed a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, while the Starship upper stage completed its trajectory and splashed down in the Indian Ocean, demonstrating improved guidance precision compared to earlier flights. Flight 13, tentatively scheduled for late June 2026, is targeting an orbital attempt contingent on Flight 12 data review. The scale of SpaceX's 2026 launch ambition is without precedent in the history of rocketry. The company is targeting more than 120 orbital-class missions across its full fleet in 2026 — approximately one launch every three days — with Falcon 9 forming the backbone and Starship intended to absorb the heaviest payload requirements. Starship stands 122 metres tall, the largest rocket ever constructed, and generates 16.7 million pounds of thrust from 33 Raptor engines in its first stage. For NASA's Artemis programme, Starship's trajectory matters enormously. Starship is the designated Human Landing System (HLS) for Artemis III, meaning it must demonstrate orbital propellant transfer — a first in spaceflight history — before crew can land on the Moon. The 2026 V3 testing campaign is building the technical and regulatory confidence base required to authorise that mission. Beyond Artemis, SpaceX has announced commercial Starship lunar cargo missions targeting 2027-2028, and the company's long-term Mars architecture depends entirely on V3-or-later hardware meeting its reusability and mass-fraction targets.

The Martian Moons eXploration mission, developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency with contributions from NASA, CNES, and DLR, is scheduled to launch during the November-December 2026 Mars launch window. MMX will travel to Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons, collect at least 10 grams of surface material, and return those samples to Earth in 2031 — making it the first-ever sample return from the Mars system and one of the most scientifically consequential missions in planetary science history. Phobos is an enigmatic body. Its origin remains fiercely debated: it may be a captured carbonaceous asteroid, or it may be debris ejected from Mars's surface by a giant impact billions of years ago. Distinguishing between these hypotheses has profound implications for understanding Mars's early history, the delivery of water and organics to the inner Solar System, and the feasibility of using Phobos as a waystation for human Mars missions. MMX's scientific payload includes the MEGANE gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer (NASA), the OROCHI wide-angle camera, the TENGOO telescopic camera, the LIDAR altimeter, and an internationally contributed seismometer package. MMX will spend approximately three years in the Mars system before departing for Earth. During that time it will also conduct a brief reconnaissance of Deimos, Mars's smaller moon. The spacecraft has a launch mass of approximately 4,000 kilograms and uses a novel sample collection system developed from lessons learned in JAXA's successful Hayabusa2 mission, which returned asteroid samples in 2020. The mission's 5-year round trip makes it the longest-duration sample return mission ever attempted, and its success would firmly establish Japan as the world's premier practitioner of robotic sample return science.

ESA's Hera spacecraft, launched in October 2024, is scheduled to arrive at the Didymos-Dimorphos binary asteroid system in November 2026 — approximately one month earlier than originally planned due to trajectory optimisation. Hera is the European follow-up to NASA's DART mission, which deliberately impacted Dimorphos on September 26, 2022, altering its orbital period around Didymos by 33 minutes. While DART proved that kinetic impact deflection works, it left critical questions unanswered: How large is the crater? How much mass was ejected? What is Dimorphos's internal structure? Hera will answer all of these. The spacecraft has a mass of 1,128 kilograms and carries a suite of advanced instruments including a wide-angle camera, a thermal infrared imager, an asteroid framing camera, and the PALT lidar altimeter. Crucially, Hera also carries two CubeSat companions deployed once in the Didymos system: Milani, which will conduct a detailed mineral survey of both asteroids' surfaces, and Juventas, which will perform the first-ever radar sounding of an asteroid's interior — a technique capable of mapping internal voids and structural weaknesses. The scientific significance of Hera's work extends well beyond satisfying curiosity. Planetary defence requires not just the ability to deflect an asteroid but the ability to predict the deflection outcome with enough confidence to avoid an overcorrection. Hera's detailed characterisation of the DART crater, the ejecta plume structure, and Dimorphos's bulk density will calibrate the models that planetary defence agencies worldwide will use for any future threat response. The European Space Agency invested approximately 363 million euros in Hera, reflecting the strategic value of planetary defence capability for Europe and the broader international community.

Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 lander — built in the Endurance configuration — is targeting a launch no earlier than September 2026 as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme. The lander is designed to deliver up to 6,600 pounds (3,000 kilograms) of cargo to the lunar surface, making it the highest-capacity commercial lander attempted to date. Its primary mission will carry a slate of NASA scientific instruments and technology demonstration payloads selected to characterise the lunar environment ahead of crewed Artemis surface missions. Blue Moon Mark 1 is the result of nearly a decade of development dating to Jeff Bezos's public introduction of the lander concept in May 2019. The vehicle uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propulsion — the same propellant combination as NASA's Space Shuttle main engines — which provides the highest specific impulse of any chemical propellant pair and allows for efficient trans-lunar injection and powered descent. The precision landing system targets a circular touchdown zone of approximately 100 metres, meeting the requirements for safe surface cargo delivery without pre-surveyed landing pads. Blue Moon's significance extends well beyond its first flight. The Mark 1 variant is explicitly the pathfinder for Blue Moon Mark 2, the crewed variant under development as Blue Origin's alternative Human Landing System for Artemis missions beyond Artemis III. If Mark 1 successfully demonstrates precision landing and payload deployment in 2026, Blue Origin gains the flight heritage that underpins its HLS contract ambitions. The CLPS programme, which funds both Blue Origin and competitors including Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, represents NASA's strategic bet that commercial competition will drive lunar logistics costs down by an order of magnitude compared to government-operated systems.

BepiColombo, the joint ESA-JAXA mission to Mercury, is scheduled to achieve Mercury orbital insertion on November 21, 2026 — 11 months later than originally planned due to a thruster anomaly discovered in September 2024 that required revised trajectory planning. The delay does not affect the mission's scientific objectives. BepiColombo launched on October 20, 2018, and has spent 7.5 years navigating the gravitational complexities of the inner Solar System, executing flybys of Earth, Venus (twice), and Mercury (six times) to shed velocity and fall into a stable Mercury orbit. The spacecraft configuration is unique in spaceflight history. Three distinct modules travel together: the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) providing propulsion and power during transit, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO, built by ESA) designed for detailed surface and exosphere science, and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio, built by JAXA) focused on the planet's anomalously large and active magnetic field. Once the MTM is jettisoned at arrival, the MPO and Mio will separate into independent elliptical orbits — two observatories working in concert around a single planet. Mercury is the least-explored terrestrial planet. NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, which orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015, revealed a world with unexpected volatile abundances, a complex crater history, and a magnetic field that punches well above its weight for a body its size. BepiColombo's more capable instrument suite — including the MERTIS mid-infrared spectrometer, the MIXS X-ray spectrometer, and JAXA's PWI plasma wave instrument — will probe these mysteries in far greater detail. Understanding Mercury is essential for testing models of planetary formation in the innermost zone of protoplanetary discs, with direct implications for understanding exoplanetary systems elsewhere in the galaxy.

China's Chang'e 7 mission, scheduled for launch in August 2026, represents the most complex robotic lunar mission China has ever attempted. The spacecraft comprises four distinct modules: an orbiter, a relay satellite, a lander, and a uniquely novel hopping rover capable of propulsive short-range jumps into permanently shadowed craters — the only way to directly investigate the ice-rich regions hidden from sunlight for billions of years. The landing target is the illuminated rim of Shackleton crater near the lunar south pole at approximately 89 degrees south latitude, the same region being surveyed for future Artemis surface missions. Chang'e 7 carries 21 scientific instruments in total, including six contributed by international partners from France, Switzerland, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Bahrain. This international payload complement reflects China's strategy of building diplomatic relationships through space collaboration while simultaneously advancing its own capabilities. The primary scientific objectives are characterising the distribution and concentration of water ice in permanently shadowed regions, mapping the thermal and radiation environment at the south pole, and conducting seismic measurements of the lunar interior. The mission's strategic context is as important as its science. Chang'e 7 is the site-survey precursor for the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a permanent facility that China and Russia have formally committed to establishing at the lunar south pole by the early 2030s. By identifying the optimal landing zone for ILRS, assessing accessible water ice deposits that could support in-situ resource utilisation, and testing the hopping rover's precision mobility, Chang'e 7 directly advances China's goal of having an operational presence at the south pole before NASA's Artemis programme establishes a crewed foothold. The geopolitical stakes of the lunar south pole — rich in water ice, solar power, and crater-rim elevation — make Chang'e 7 one of the most consequential missions of 2026.

ESA's PLATO mission — Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars — is scheduled to launch in December 2026 aboard an Ariane 6 rocket, bound for the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point approximately 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. PLATO is distinguished by its unprecedented multi-telescope architecture: 26 cameras arranged in four overlapping groups observe simultaneously, providing photometric precision at a field-of-view scale that no single large telescope can achieve. This configuration allows PLATO to monitor more than 200,000 stars continuously, searching for the telltale brightness dips of transiting exoplanets. PLATO's primary science goal goes beyond simple planet detection. By simultaneously measuring stellar oscillations — the natural acoustic modes that make stars ring like bells — PLATO can determine the ages and masses of host stars with unprecedentedly high precision. This enables accurate characterisation of exoplanet radii, densities, and ultimately habitability assessments that previous missions like Kepler and TESS could not achieve. The mission specifically targets Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars, the category most likely to host environments compatible with life as we understand it. PLATO has a spacecraft mass of approximately 2,300 kilograms and a deployed solar panel wingspan of around 9 metres. The 26 cameras are divided into 24 normal cameras (each with a 1-degree field of view) and 2 fast cameras (used for bright stars requiring rapid readout). ESA estimates that PLATO will discover hundreds to thousands of exoplanets over its nominal 4-year mission, including dozens of Earth-sized planets in habitable zones. The mission represents Europe's flagship contribution to exoplanet science for the 2030s, complementing NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope's atmospheric characterisation capabilities.

Astrobotic's Griffin Mission One is scheduled to launch no earlier than July 2026 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Griffin is a medium-class commercial lunar lander designed to deliver payloads in the 1,100-pound (500-kilogram) range to the lunar surface, significantly larger than Astrobotic's earlier Peregrine lander, which suffered a propulsion failure in January 2024 and never achieved lunar landing. Griffin Mission One's primary payload is Astrolab's FLEX (Flexible Logistics and Exploration) rover — a 1,500-kilogram modular vehicle designed for payload transport and extended traverses on the lunar surface. The mission is funded under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme, which provides launch and mission funding in exchange for guaranteed payload delivery services. If successful, Griffin Mission One would be the first demonstration of a commercial mid-class lunar lander fully completing its objectives — a milestone the CLPS programme has sought since its 2018 inception. The Peregrine failure and Intuitive Machines' IM-1 mission (which landed but tipped on its side in February 2024) underscore how technically demanding precision lunar landing remains. Astrobotic's Griffin lander stands approximately 6 metres tall and uses a throttleable methane/liquid oxygen engine for powered descent — a propellant combination chosen partly for its potential in-situ resource utilisation compatibility with future missions. The company has contracted payload slots to both NASA and commercial customers, demonstrating that demand for lunar cargo services is real and growing. Astrolab's FLEX rover, designed to operate for up to one year on the lunar surface, represents an additional commercial layer — a robot-as-a-service model that could underpin a broader commercial lunar economy. Together, Griffin and FLEX constitute the most commercially significant lunar mission of 2026 after Blue Moon.

In early 2026, NASA formalised its commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) development strategy by maintaining active partnerships with both Axiom Space and Vast Space — the two companies furthest along in developing private orbital stations to replace the International Space Station, which is planned for deorbit in 2030. Axiom Space is developing a multi-modular station beginning with its Payload Power Thermal (PPT) module, initially planned to attach to the ISS before operating independently. Vast Space is developing Haven-1, a single-module commercial station targeted for a 2027 SpaceX Falcon 9 launch, and the larger Haven-2 architecture (a nine-module station) on a longer horizon. NASA awarded Commercial LEO Destination (CLD) contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to both companies as part of a multi-vendor strategy designed to prevent monopoly pricing in LEO access after ISS retirement. In 2026, both companies are advancing crew training, hardware fabrication, and launch vehicle integration. Vast's Haven-1 will fly four-person crews on SpaceX Dragon under a commercial mission contract, while Axiom has flown four private astronaut missions to ISS since 2022, establishing operational procedures for commercial crew management. The strategic significance of these partnerships for 2026 is architectural rather than operational. The decisions made now about module design, life-support redundancy, and commercial payload capacity will determine whether a functional commercial LEO ecosystem exists when ISS splashes down. If Haven-1 launches successfully in 2027 and Haven-2 follows by 2030, the transition from government-operated to commercial space station infrastructure will be the most consequential institutional shift in human spaceflight since the Shuttle programme's inception in the 1970s.