2026 in spaceflight

This article documents expected notable spaceflight events during the year 2026.

On 11 January, NASA launched the Pandora small space telescope to study exoplanet atmospheres. The same Falcon 9 flight also carried two CubeSat-type space telescopes by NASA: SPARCS and BlackCAT, alongside other payloads.

In February, ESA's experimental heliophysics mission PROBA-3 suffered an anomaly which led to the loss of contact with one of the two spacecraft.

In April or March, ESA and CAS plan to launch their joint heliophysics mission SMILE.

In mid-2026, ESA plans to launch the CubeSpec satellite for testing a low-cost small satellite platform for long-term spectroscopic monitoring of stars from space on the specific case of asteroseismology of massive stars.

In mid-2026, NASA plans to launch the SunRISE mission consisting of six CubeSats for studying solar activity.

In mid-2026, NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is planned to be boosted to a higher orbit by a private Arizona-based firm, Katalyst Space Technologies. Katalyst Space announced that they would utilize a spacecraft launched on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL aircraft-borne rocket.

In August, NASA plans to launch the small UV telescope Aspera designed to map hot gas in the circumgalactic and intergalactic medium of nearby galaxies.