2024 in spaceflight

The year 2024 is expected to exceed 2023's 223 orbital launches. So far, the year saw the successful first launch of Vulcan Centaur, Gravity-1, Ariane 6 (partially successful), and notably more developmental launches of SpaceX's Starship – with IFT-3, IFT-4, IFT-5, and IFT-6 planned for this year. Additionally, the final launch of a Delta family rocket occurred in April with a Delta IV Heavy. In May, China launched the Chang'e 6, the first sample return from the far side of the Moon.

In terms of other national-level scientific space missions, NASA's Europa Clipper probe, NASA's EscaPADE probe, ESA's Hera probe, and NISAR Earth observation satellite are planned to launch in 2024. NASA's Ingenuity helicopter ended operation in January due to damages to rotor blades after its 72nd flight. This year is also expected to see many lunar landing attempts. JAXA's SLIM and Intuitive Machines' IM-1 have successfully survived soft-landings on the Moon but were tipped over during final moments of descent.

Two crewed space stations, the International Space Station (ISS) and Tiangong, are in operation in 2024. In terms of crewed missions, the ISS will be visited by Expedition 70, 71, and 72, while Shenzhou 18 and 19 will visit Tiangong. The ISS will also host private crews of Axiom Mission 3 and Axiom Mission 4.

This year saw Alper Gezeravcı become the first Turkish astronaut, as a crew member on Axiom Mission 3. Belarus also had its first citizen reach space, when cosmonaut Marina Vasilevskaya launched on Soyuz MS-25 (not counting Pyotr Klimuk, Vladimir Kovalyonok, and Oleg Novitsky who were Soviet or Russian citizens of Belarusian origin when they traveled to space).

Astronomy and astrophysics
On New Year's Day at 3:40 UTC marking the first launch of the new year, ISRO launched their XPoSat for studying X-ray polarization. It will serve as a complement to the present IXPE probe of NASA. Later the ISRO's Aditya-L1 spacecraft launched 5 months previously was inserted into a halo orbit around the Earth-Sun L1 point on 6 January. It will study the solar atmosphere, solar magnetic storms, and their impact on the environment around Earth.

Einstein Probe, X-ray space telescope mission by Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in partnership with ESA and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) dedicated to time-domain high-energy astrophysics, was launched on 9 January 2024.

In April 2024, NASA began, under the direction of the Office of Science and Technology Policy to create a standard for time on the Moon, it is called Coordinated Lunar Time and is expected to be completed by 2026.

The Space Variable Objects Monitor is a small X-ray telescope satellite for studying the explosions of massive stars by analysing the resulting gamma-ray bursts, developed by China National Space Administration (CNSA), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the French Space Agency (CNES), launched on 22 June 2024 (07:00:00 UTC).

European Space Agency will launch their PROBA-3 dual satellites for solar coronagraphy.

Exploration of the Solar System
NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity flew its 72nd and last flight on Jan. 18, 2024. Because all four of its rotor blades were damaged, NASA announced the end of mission for Ingenuity on 25 January 2024.

NASA plans to launch the Europa Clipper in October, which will study the Jovian moon Europa while in orbit around Jupiter.

Hera will launch to Didymos asteroid to study the after effects of Double Asteroid Redirection Test.

NASA's EscaPADE mission to Mars is also planned to launch this year.

Peregrine
Peregrine lunar lander was successfully launched on 8 January, but after the launch a propellant leak was detected that precluded any attempt to perform a lunar landing. In the end, the Peregrine spacecraft never left the (highly elliptical) Earth orbit it was injected into by the carrier rocket, and the mission ended ten days later (after one orbit) on 18 January when the spacecraft re-entered the Earth's atmosphere (under control of the mission team) and was destroyed.

SLIM
SLIM achieved the first-ever lunar soft landing for a Japanese spacecraft. It landed on 19 January 2024 at 15:20 UTC, making Japan the 5th country to soft land on the Moon. Although it landed successfully, its in wrong attitude, because the solar panels are oriented westwards facing opposite the Sun at the start of lunar day, thereby failing to generate enough power. The lander operated on an internal battery power, which was fully drained that day. The mission's operators hope that the lander will wake up after a few days when sunlight should hit the solar panels. SLIM showed perseverance and survived another lunar night waking up on 28 March 2024.

Irrespective of this solar array issue on lander, the two LEV 1 and 2 rovers, deployed during hovering just before final landing are working as expected and LEV-1 communicating independently to the ground stations. LEV-1 conducted seven hops over 107 minutes on lunar surface. Images taken by LEV-2 show the wrong attitude landing with loss of an engine nozzle during descent and even possible sustained damage to lander's Earth bound antenna, that is not pointed towards Earth. Irrespective of wrong attitude and loss of communication with the lander, the mission is already fully successful after confirmation of its primary goal landing within 100 m of its landing spot was already achieved.

On 29 January, the lander resumed operations after being shut down for a week. JAXA said it re-established contact with the lander and its solar cells were working again after a shift in lighting conditions allowed it to catch sunlight. After that, SLIM was put in sleep mode for impending harsh lunar night. SLIM was expected to operate only for one lunar daylight period, or 14 Earth days, and the on-board electronics were not designed to withstand the -120 C nighttime temperatures on the Moon. On 25 February 2024, JAXA sent wake-up calls and found SLIM had successfully survived the another lunar night on the lunar surface while maintaining communication capabilities. Since it was midday of the lunar day on the moon on 25 February 2024, the temperature of the communications payload was extremely high, so communication was terminated after only a short period of time. JAXA is now preparing for resumed operations, once the temperature has fallen sufficiently. This feat of surviving lunar night without a radioisotope heater unit was only previously achieved by some landers in the Surveyor program.

On 27 March 2024, SLIM survived its second lunar night and woke up sending more images back to Earth, showing "perseverance." Jaxa said "According to the acquired data, some temperature sensors and unused battery cells are starting to malfunction, but the majority of functions that survived the first lunar night was maintained even after the second lunar night."

On 24 April 2024, it survived its third lunar night and woke up sending more images back to Earth.

Nova-C
IM-1 Nova-C Odysseus launched on 15 February 2024 towards the Moon via Falcon 9 on a direct intercept trajectory and later landed in the south polar region of the Moon on 22 February 2024 and became the first successful private lander and the first to do so using cryogenic propellants. Though it landed successfully, one of the lander's legs broke upon landing and it tilted up on other side, 18° due to landing on a slope, but the lander survived and payloads are functioning as expected.

Just before landing, at approximately 30 m above the lunar surface, the Odysseus lander was planned to eject the EagleCam camera-equipped CubeSat, which would have been dropped onto the lunar surface near the lander, with an impact velocity of about 10 m/s. However, due to complications arising from the software patch, it was decided that EagleCam would not be ejected upon landing. It was later ejected on 28 February but was partially failure as it returned all types of data, except post IM-1 landing images that were the main aim of its mission.

The lander also includes the Lunar Library that contains a version of the English Wikipedia, artworks, selections from the Internet Archive, portions of the Project Gutenberg, and more. It is projected to reside on the Moon in a readable state for billions of years.

IM-2 is planned to launch late in the year.

China Lunar Exploration Program
On 13 March, China attempted to launch two spacecrafts, DRO-A and DRO-B, into distant retrograde orbit around the Moon, but the mission failed to reach the strived for orbit, remaining stranded in low Earth orbit.

On 20 March, China launched its relay satellite, Queqiao-2, to lunar orbit, along with two mini satellites Tiandu 1 and 2. Queqiao-2 will relay communications for the Chang'e 6 (far side of the Moon), Chang'e 7 and Chang'e 8 (Lunar south pole region) spacecrafts. Tiandu 1 and 2 will test technologies for a future lunar navigation and positioning constellation. All the three probes entered lunar orbit successfully on 24 March 2024 (Both were attached to each other and separated in lunar orbit on 3 April 2024).

China sent Chang'e 6 on 3 May 2024, which conducted the first lunar sample return from Apollo Basin on the far side of the Moon. This is China's second lunar sample return mission, the first was achieved by Chang'e 5 from the lunar near side four years earlier. It carries several international payloads as well as an un-(pre)announced Chinese mini-rover called Yidong Xiangji (it means mobile camera) to conduct infrared spectroscopy of lunar surface and imaged Chang'e 6 lander on lunar surface. Turns out that the mini-rover was used to take picture(s) of the lander-ascender stack. The lander-ascender-rover combination was separated from the orbiter and returner before landing on 1 June 2024 at 22:23 UTC. It landed on the Moon's surface on 1 June 2024. The ascender was launched back to lunar orbit on 3 June 2024 at 23:38 UTC, carrying samples collected by the lander, and completed rendezvous and docking with the waiting orbiter in lunar orbit. The sample container was transferred to the returner, which landed in Inner Mongolia on 25 June 2024, completing China's lunar far side sample return mission. Pakistan sent a lunar orbiter called ICUBE-Q along with Chang'e 6. The lander also placed a small national flag of China, made of basalt, a substance that occurs in vast quantities on the Moon's surface, to demonstrate the spirit of in situ resource utilization.

Future
Nova-C 2, iSpace Lander and Blue Ghost are all planned to launch to the Moon this year. Aboard the Nova-C lander will be a 4G cellular network demonstration created in partnership between NASA and Nokia Bell Labs. The demonstration is meant to establish the beginnings of modern communication technology on the Moon.

DARPA provided funding towards a forward looking 10 year lunar architecture proposals. Aimed at creating the beginning stages of a lunar economy the DARPA lunar programs is participated in by many current industry leaders.

NASA's lunar rover, VIPER, that was expected to be launched by the end of the year, was cancelled in July.

Human spaceflight
On 4 February, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko broke the world record for the most time spent in space, when he surpassed the previous record of 878 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes and 48 seconds held by retired cosmonaut Gennady Padalka. Kononenko is expected to return in late September, at which point he will have spent a total of 1110 days in space.

On 5 June, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft conducted its crewed test flight. Sunita Williams became the first woman to fly on the maiden crewed flight of an orbital spacecraft (for a suborbital spacecraft, similar feat was accomplished by Wally Funk on Blue Origin NS-16 mission of New Shepard).

ISRO will launch their Gaganyaan spacecraft on uncrewed missions and SPADEX docking experiment this year.

Private human spaceflight and space tourism
SpaceX launched Axiom Mission 3 aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) on 18 January 2024. The successful mission ended with a splashdown on 9 February 2024. SpaceX plans to launch Axiom Mission 4 to the ISS later in the year 2024.

On 26 January, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity was successfully launched from Spaceport America on Galactic 06 suborbital space tourism mission. Galactic 07 launched on 8 June, the final flight of Unity suborbital spaceplane.

Blue Origin's New Shepard also returned to space tourism launches with the successful NS-25 mission on 19 May.

Polaris Dawn, featuring the first commercial spacewalk, is planned to launch in July.

Rocket innovation
The maiden flight of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur took place on 8 January 2024. Vulcan is the first methane fueled rocket to reach orbit on its first attempt, and the first methane fueled rocket to reach orbit from the US.

China's Orienspace's Gravity-1 rocket completed its successful maiden flight on 11 January 2024, debuting on a new mobile sea platform in the Yellow Sea while breaking records as both the world's largest solid-fuel carrier rocket and China's most powerful commercial launch vehicle to date (as of early 2024).

On 5 March, for the first time due to their fast turnaround of 1 hour 51 minutes between launches, SpaceX launch operations for a mission (in this case, Starlink Group 6-41) coincided with that of a preceding launch (in this case, payload deployment of Transporter-10:(53 payloads SmallSat Rideshare).

On 13 March, the KAIROS rocket from Space One company attempted its maiden flight. The rocket was destroyed in an explosion five seconds after lift-off. No injuries were caused by the explosion.

On 9 April, the Delta IV Heavy flew its final mission. This was the final flight of the Delta rocket family.

Another test flight of the Russian Angara A5 launched on 11 April 2024.

On 7 May, Long March 6C flew its successful maiden mission.

In May, Rocket Factory Ausburg's RFA One arrived at SaxaVord Spaceport in preparation for its inaugural launch and the first launch from the new spaceport.

SpaceX's Starship launched its fourth integrated flight test (IFT-4) on June 6, 2024. The launch resulted in the successful controlled splashdown of both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship vehicle.

In June, Stoke Space tested its full flow staged combustion cycle (FFSC) engine with a successful hotfire, the test marks only the fourth FFSC engine to have made it far enough in development to reach hotfire.

The maiden flight of Long March 8A, a variant of Long March 8 with a larger second stage, is scheduled for June 2024.

The central core for the Ariane 6 inaugural flight vehicle was moved upright on the launch pad on 24 April 2024 in preparation for launch on 9 July. Launch occurred on 9 July but was a partial failure as though cubeSats were deployed correctly but second stage failed to relight due to an anomaly with an auxiliary power unit, and the second stage could not be deorbited.

On July 12, 2024, SpaceX launched a routine group of Starlink satellites called Starlink Group 9-3 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on a Falcon 9 rocket. While the booster performed nominally, including a successful droneship landing, the upper stage failed to relight for a second burn, with Elon Musk describing that the upper stage engine had disintegrated. The satellites were injected into a lower than planned orbit. SpaceX instructed the satellites to begin orbit raising, but mentioned that it was unlikely that they would do so successfully and later all satellites were declared lost. Thus, this launch was the first Falcon 9 Block 5 or Falcon 9 Full Thrust failure thereby breaking the Guinness World Record of 325 successful Falcon 9 launches created by SpaceX since the pre-flight anomaly of AMOS-6.

The maiden flight of Blue Origin's New Glenn is planned for September 29, 2024. Initial rollout of the vehicle and testing was completed in February and in May Blue Origin planned to conduct additional testing in preparation for launch. On June 12 Blue Origin received the communications license necessary for the flight.

Space Pioneer (aka Tianbing) plans to launch its medium-lift orbital launch vehicle Tianlong-3 in September.

NASA's Dream Chaser spaceplane, developed by Sierra Space, is scheduled to have its first flight in December with the SSC Demo-1 mission. It will visit the International Space Station.

Satellite technology
Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem or PACE, a NASA Earth-observing satellite, launched on 8 February 2024.

In March, China successfully launched the Queqiao-2 relay satellite mission. The satellites are designed to act as a communication relay between its Chang’e missions (including the Chang'e 6) and Earth. The satellites were announced as operational in April.

In April, NASA launched a next-generation solar sail demonstration aboard a Rocket Lab Electron.

Next generation Earth imaging satellites WorldView Legion were launched on May 2.

ESA EarthCARE launched on May 28. Joint mission with JAXA.

NASA's GOES-U launched on June 25, with the capability to detect coronal mass ejections.

JAXA's ALOS-4 launched on July 1. It carries PALSAR-3 (Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar-3).

NISAR, the most expensive and largest radar imaging satellite will be launched from India onboard GSLV Mk-II by Q4 2024. Initially planned for a launch on 30 March, it was postponed as a problem with its radar reflector array, which could overheat caused it to be held back for application of a special coating to minimise those effects

Launches from the Moon

 * }

By country
For the purposes of this section, the yearly tally of orbital launches by country assigns each flight to the country of origin of the rocket, not to the launch services provider or the spaceport. For example, Electron rockets launched from the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand are counted under the United States because Electron is an American rocket. Launches from the Moon are not included in the statistics.

By country
For the purposes of this section, the yearly tally of suborbital launches by country assigns each flight to the country of origin of the rocket, not to the launch services provider or the spaceport. Flights intended to fly below 80 km are omitted.