November Space Missions: A Busy Month for Space Exploration
As the year 2025 draws to a close, the space industry shows no signs of slowing down, with a plethora of exciting missions scheduled for November. Despite the ongoing government shutdown, which has resulted in the furlough of some 15,000 NASA employees, the agency is still expecting multiple launches this month. According to a NASA spokesperson, the upcoming launches will include the highly anticipated EscaPADE mission, which will carry twin satellites bound for Mars, and the second satellite in the Sentinel-6B series, scheduled to launch on a SpaceX rocket.
Private companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab are also leading the charge, with a range of missions planned for the month. Low-Earth-orbit satellite deployments will continue unabated, including another round of Starlink launches by SpaceX. Meanwhile, space agencies across Europe and Asia are also preparing for launches, highlighting the increasingly global nature of space exploration. As noted by European Space Agency Director-General, Josef Aschbacher, “the space industry is becoming increasingly international, with countries and companies from around the world playing a vital role in advancing our understanding of space.”
Notable Missions to Watch in November
On November 2, a Falcon 9 rocket carried a satellite equipped with an Nvidia H100 GPU into orbit as part of a data centre testbed. The chip represents the fastest A.I. accelerator ever flown to space, and is a significant milestone in the development of space-based data centres. Starcloud, the startup behind the project, aims to eventually deploy data centers in space, reducing the energy and cooling demands of terrestrial facilities. As explained by Starcloud CEO, William Wu, “our goal is to create a network of space-based data centres that can provide fast, secure, and sustainable computing power to customers around the world.”
On the same day, India’s national space agency launched its heaviest-ever communications satellite, weighing approximately 4,400 kg (9,700 lb). This launch marks a significant achievement for India’s space program, which has been rapidly expanding in recent years. According to Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman, S. Somanath, “this launch demonstrates our capability to build and launch heavy satellites, and will provide a significant boost to our communications capabilities.”
Here are six more space missions to watch in November:
Nov. 4: Ariancespace to launch an Ariane 6 rocket. Europe’s Arianespace will launch the Sentinel-1D Earth-observation satellite, part of the E.U.’s Copernicus programme, from the Guiana Space Centre. This will be the fourth launch of an Ariane 6 rocket, whose design was funded primarily by France, followed by Germany and Italy.
Nov. 5: SpaceX to launch the Starlink 6-81 mission. SpaceX will conduct a routine launch of a batch of Starlink Version 2 Mini satellites into low-Earth orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
Nov. 5: ULA to launch a Viasat satellite. United Launch Alliance will launch an Atlas V rocket to deploy ViaSat-3 Flight 2, designed to provide ultra-high-capacity broadband service.
Nov. 5 (or around that date): Rocket Lab to launch “The Nation God Navigates” mission. Rocket Lab will launch the Japanese satellite QPS-SAR-14 (nicknamed Yachihoko-1) aboard its Electron rocket from Māhia, New Zealand. The mission is in collaboration with Japan’s Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space, Inc., which specializes in Earth imaging.
TBD: Blue Origin to launch a Mars mission for NASA. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is expected to launch a pair of twin satellites for NASA’s EscaPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission. The two spacecraft, named “Blue” and “Gold,” will spend roughly eleven months on their journey to Mars’ orbit, studying how the solar wind interacts with the Red Planet’s atmosphere and magnetic field.
TBD: SpaceX to launch Sentinel-6B. A Falcon 9 rocket is slated to launch the second satellite in the Sentinel-6/Jason-CS series, Sentinel-6B, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in November 2025. The mission, organised by NASA in partnership with ESA, EUMETSAT and NOAA, will continue the long-term global record of sea-surface height measurements.
Luo Yunfei/China News Service via Getty Images
Image Source: observer.com
