Even as we approach the final months of 2025, the space industry shows no sign of slowing down. Amid the government shutdown, some 15,000 employees at NASA have been furloughed, but the agency still expects multiple launches this month. Among these are 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.
In the private sector, the pace remains intense. Low-Earth-orbit satellite deployments continue unabated, including another round of Starlink launches by SpaceX. Meanwhile, space agencies across Europe and Asia are also preparing for launches this month.
Kicking off November, on Nov. 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. Starcloud, the startup behind the project, aims to eventually deploy data centers in space, reducing the energy and cooling demands of terrestrial facilities.
On the same day, India’s national space agency launched its heaviest-ever communications satellite, weighing approximately 4,400 kg (9,700 lb).
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. The goal is to understand how the planet lost its habitability. The mission has been delayed three times since August.
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. The first of the series—Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich—was launched on 21 November 2020.
