The space race is back — and this time it's more crowded, more international, and more commercially driven than ever before.
In November 2022, NASA's Artemis I mission launched — an uncrewed test flight around the Moon that marked humanity's first lunar mission since Apollo 17 in 1972. It worked. The stage was set for a crewed lunar return.
SpaceX's Starship
SpaceX continued its dramatic Starship development program — with multiple test flights, several explosive failures, and eventual successes that pushed the boundaries of rocket engineering. The Starship is designed to take humans to the Moon and eventually Mars.
The International Dimension
India's Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed near the Moon's south pole in August 2023 — making India only the fourth country to achieve a soft lunar landing and the first to land near the south pole. Japan and other nations made significant advances. The new space race involves far more players than the original.
Why It Matters
Humanity's expansion beyond Earth is one of the great long-term stories of our species. The years 2022-2025 may be remembered as when that expansion became genuinely inevitable.