Last year delivered doses of drama and excitement in the space business, with a record number of launches, breathtaking vistas of other worlds, and a multitude of breakthroughs and setbacks. 2026 is shaping up to be another thrilling year in the cosmos.

Firefly Aerospace successfully landed its Blue Ghost spacecraft on the Moon on Sunday, marking only the second private mission to achieve the milestone!

A growing fleet of privately built spacecraft is preparing to attempt robotic landings on the moon as humanity's exploration efforts expand.

Which US rocket companies achieved the most during 2025? Once again, Ars Technica is here to provide some answers in the form of our annual power ranking of US launch companies. We began doing this in 2022 and have since put out a top-10 list every year (see 2023 and 2024 ).

The 26-foot-tall (8-meter-tall) cargo lander is expected to embark on its first flight during the first quarter of 2026, touching down near the Shackleton crater at the Moon’s south pole. This demonstration mission, dubbed “Pathfinder,” will aim to validate all of the lander’s hardware and systems, including its never-before-flown BE-7 engine.

Whether Artemis ultimately fulfills its promise of sustained lunar exploration, or is reshaped by politics, budgets and competition with China, the program's first crewed flight around the moon will mark a definitive turning point. In 2026, humanity isn't just planning to return to lunar space — it's actually going.

The White House plan to kill the cutting-edge Orion spacecraft, shown here, and the Space Launch System super-rocket could halt NASA's ability to land astronauts on the Moon in the late 2020s, even as Space Race II unfolds. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty ...

A supercomputer simulation of the Apollo 12 landing on the moon was created to "improve its understanding of plume-surface interactions," according to NASA. Credit: Patrick Moran, NASA Ames Research Center/Andrew Weaver,

The first stage of Firefly Aerospace's 96-foot-tall Alpha rocket exploded while the spacecraft was vertical on a test stand in Briggs, Texas. Firefly made a name for itself in 2025 when its Blue Ghost lunar lander became the second-ever commercial ...