Next year, the United States will send astronauts into lunar orbit for the first time in half a century, and China will begin drilling into the oceanic crust 11 km deep. Japan and India will each launch probes to Mars and the sun, and the United Kingdom will release clinical trial results for a blood test that diagnoses 50 types of cancer. In laboratories, artificial intelligence (AI) scientists will be introduced in earnest, changing the landscape of scientific research. The international journal Nature on the 18th said it selected and released events to watch in science in 2026 with these themes.
◇ Exploration race among space powers heats up
Nature projected that the exploration race among space powers will remain fierce next year. The United States resumed crewed lunar exploration through the Artemis program for the first time in half a century, after it was halted following Apollo 17 in 1972. Artemis I succeeded in an uncrewed test launch in 2022, and around Feb. next year, Artemis II is set to send four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft into lunar orbit to fly around the moon. The 10-day flight will be the first crewed lunar mission since the 1970s and is expected to help prepare for the Artemis III lunar landing mission in 2027.
China is also preparing in Aug. to launch Chang'e 7, the next uncrewed lunar probe. Chang'e 7 has been developed as a hopping lander equipped with shock absorption to touch down at the moon's south pole, where rocks and impact craters are strewn. It will search for abundant ice at the south pole and study moonquakes. Earlier, in 2023, India's Chandrayaan-3 landed near the lunar south pole for the first time.
Europe, Japan and India will explore deep space beyond the moon. Japan will launch MMX (Martian Moons eXploration), a mission to explore Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos. The spacecraft will collect soil samples from the surface of Phobos and return to Earth in 2031. The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch the PLATO planetary exploration satellite at the end of next year. Using 26 onboard cameras to observe more than 200,000 bright stars, PLATO will identify "Earth-like planets" within temperature ranges where water could exist.
India's first solar probe, Aditya-L1, will closely observe the peak of solar activity. Recently, the sun entered the solar maximum for the first time in 11 years. During solar maximum, high-energy particles can erupt and affect satellites, communications and power grids, requiring continuous monitoring. Since last year, Aditya-L1 has settled into an orbit about 1.5 million km from Earth that allows continuous observation of the sun.
◇ Artificial intelligence rises to the ranks of scientists
Artificial intelligence (AI) made a quantum leap in scientific research this year. Scientists used AI's Machine Learning and Deep Learning to design proteins that could become new drugs. Machine Learning is an AI technique that learns large-scale data and finds methods on its own without prior programming. Deep Learning is a deep machine learning method that mimics the structure of human neurons.
AI-driven scientific research is expected to continue. Nature predicted that AI agents—software that integrates multiple large language models (LLMs) to replace tasks once performed by humans—will be adopted more widely, and some will operate without human oversight. LLMs, like ChatGPT, learn vast numbers of sentences written by humans and can converse naturally as people do. In the same way, they can also write desired text.
Nature predicted that next year could see the first major scientific advance led by AI. But as AI is used more in research, serious flaws in some systems could also emerge. Scientists have already reported that AI agents are prone to errors such as deleting data.
◇ Advances in gene editing and cancer blood diagnostics
For the first time this year, a clinical trial of gene editing for a baby with a genetic disease succeeded. Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia this year delivered the world's first personalized gene-editing treatment to a baby named KJ Muldoon. Muldoon was born with severe CPS1 deficiency, a rare genetic disorder in which proteins do not break down properly. Starting at 6 months old, Muldoon received three rounds of treatment using CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the problematic gene and recovered motor function to the point of beginning to sit up unaided.
Next year, two clinical trials of gene editing will proceed for pediatric patients with rare genetic diseases. The team that treated Muldoon will, with approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), conduct additional clinical trials in Philadelphia. Using the same approach as in Muldoon's treatment, the researchers will edit seven variant gene mutations. Another team will start a similar trial next year targeting immune system genetic disorders.
◇ Giant instruments to pierce the seafloor and illuminate fundamental particles
Mega-scale experimental instruments are also drawing attention. Next year, China's ocean drilling vessel Mengxiang will embark on its first scientific expedition. Mengxiang will drill the oceanic crust to depths of up to 11 km to collect samples. The project aims to learn how the seafloor formed and what drives crustal activity.
Near Geneva, Switzerland, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) will carry out a major upgrade to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) next year. The LHC, the world's largest particle accelerator, is located underground along the Swiss-French border and has a circumference of 27 km. It is the largest scientific apparatus on Earth, recreating conditions from the Big Bang to reveal the secrets of the universe's birth. It accelerates protons to near the speed of light and collides them to study the fundamental particles produced.
Fermilab in the United States plans to complete construction of the Mu2e detector by Apr. next year. Mu2e is the English abbreviation for "muon-to-electron conversion." Particle physicists hope that directly detecting whether muons—one of the fundamental particles—convert into electrons when they collide with an atomic nucleus could transform the fundamental understanding of particle physics. Data collection is scheduled to begin in 2027 after commissioning.
◇ Trump's second year casts a shadow over science
The shockwaves that U.S. President Donald Trump sent through science are expected to continue in 2026. The first year of Trump's term brought major shifts in U.S. science policy. Clashes between the White House and Congress over cuts to science budgets appear likely to persist. With a vaccine skeptic leading the Department of Health and Human Services, public health policy has wobbled. U.S. climate change policy could also be weakened.
U.S. universities must resolve immigration-related restrictions that could limit the movement of international students and scientists. Research institutions could be drawn into legal battles over federal subsidies and job cuts. Nature analyzed, "The Trump administration has reoriented national research priorities toward artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum technologies," adding, "Some researchers welcome this, but others worry that resources will be diverted from other fields."
References
Nature (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03673-6