Headline: "NASA's Planetary Science Division Celebrates Accomplishments and Explores the Future of Planetary Exploration"

NASA’s Planetary Science Division is wrapping up 2025 with a major year in review event, holding a live webinar on December 10, 2025, at 1 PM Eastern time to highlight the year’s accomplishments in planetary research. The session, hosted by the Planetary Research Programs office, celebrates recent progress in planetary science, shares updates on NASA’s Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science programs, and discusses how the agency is advancing recommendations from the latest planetary science decadal survey. Questions from the planetary science community are being collected and prioritized in advance through an online portal, and while the presentation will not be recorded, the slides will be made publicly available afterward. This reflects NASA’s ongoing effort to keep the research community closely involved in shaping the direction of planetary exploration.

In lunar exploration, NASA continues to advance its Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, with several upcoming missions expected to deliver science instruments to the Moon. Intuitive Machines is preparing for its IM 2 mission, which will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and carry NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer orbiter to study water on the Moon. Around the same time, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander, also part of CLPS, will attempt a Moon landing carrying the Lunar PlanetVac sampling instrument, a device developed with support from The Planetary Society. These missions underscore a growing reliance on commercial partners to deliver planetary science payloads, a pattern that is reshaping how NASA conducts lunar and planetary exploration.

Meanwhile, NASA’s planetary defense efforts remain active, with the Planetary Defense Coordination Office issuing its monthly update on near Earth asteroids and close approaches as of early December 2025. The office continues to track potentially hazardous objects and refine impact risk assessments, maintaining a steady focus on protecting Earth from asteroid threats. In deep space, NASA’s Juno mission is nearing the end of its extended mission at Jupiter, with discussions underway about whether the spacecraft will be intentionally deorbited into the planet. At the same time, the interstellar comet 3I ATLAS is making its closest approach to Earth in mid December, giving astronomers a rare chance to study an object from outside our solar system using ground based and space based telescopes.

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