The timeline
Space-Industrial Milestones, 2019-2110
Filter by destination, decade and confidence. Dated program events come first; book analysis carries the Modeled tag and a horizon rather than a launch date.
Showing 66 of 66 milestones
| Date | Destination | Program | Operator | Event | Rated |
|---|
Rows are drawn from one data array in the page source, ready to move into a database table. Mars launch windows recur every 26 months; see Launch Windows & Cadence.
Reading it
Program Dates Slip; Physics Dates Do Not
Two kinds of date sit in the same table. Mars launch windows are fixed by orbital mechanics and carry the Observed tag. Program dates - Artemis IV, Tianwen-3, the ILRS power station - are announcements, and the record since January 2026 shows how fast they move: Mars Sample Return cancelled, Gateway cancelled, Artemis III turned into a low Earth orbit docking test, New Glenn lost on its pad, Chang'e-7 postponed.
China holds its dates in public and reprices in private; the US reprices in public. The crewed landing before 2030 on Long March 10, Mengzhou and Lanyue has not moved, and Tianwen-3 is now the only funded Mars sample return on the books.
Rows past 2040 come from original analysis, not from any program schedule. They mark the order things have to happen in: lunar water before EML-1 depots, depots before belt cargo, nuclear electric propulsion before any crewed outer-system presence. The order is firmer than the year.
Contested
Deliberately Not Claimed
The load-bearing uncertainties, tagged with the confidence they actually earn.
The 2026-2030 block will be partly wrong by publication. Rows in development move faster than anything else on the site. This page is the place they get corrected.
Modeled rows are sequence, not schedule. The lunar mass driver, Arcadia Planitia outpost, Ceres staging and Callisto anchor are placed by what must come first, not by a funded plan.
The interstellar dates assume a beam that does not exist. A launch around 2085 at 0.2c needs a 100 GW-class array and a sail with absorptivity below 10-5; neither has been built.
Record
Provenance and Data Sources
- Confidence
- Observed for flown, fielded or measured - Building for hardware and programs in development - Projected for announced plans - Modeled for original analysis
- Status date
- Q4 2026
- Data
- NASA, ESA, JAXA, CNSA and CMSA mission announcements; FCC filings; Rubin Observatory
- China
- Chang'e-4 to Chang'e-8; Queqiao-2; Tianwen-1 to Tianwen-4; Tiangong; Mengzhou, Lanyue and Long March 10; ILRS with Roscosmos; Three-Body Computing Constellation
- Weakest link
- Program dates after 2028