Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Downlink

THE DOWNLINK
Main page   Discussion   Issues   Mailing list   Parent project Welcome to The Downlink, a project to distribute a monthly newsletter to members of WikiProject Spaceflight to keep them up to date with developments within the project and with its associated articles. The Downlink can be delivered to a users talk page in an opt-in basis. If you wish to receive the newsletter, please add your username to the mailing list. To unsubscribe, just remove your username from the mailing list. The Downlink members Feel free to add your name to this list in alphabetical order if you would like to join the project. Also, if you like, you could add {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Downlink/Userbox}} to your user page. Aman.kumar.goel (talk · contribs) Anshuman~Potu~Tipu (talk · contribs) Benison (talk · contribs) frozenprakash (talk · contribs) Itsfullofstars (talk · contribs) Ninney (talk · contribs) XFalcon2004x (talk · contribs) StarshipSLS (talk · contribs) Ships&Space (talk · contribs) Previous Issues Previous issues of The Downlink can be found at the issues tab above or at: Category:WikiProject Spaceflight newsletters. The Downlink is currently being updated monthly. The most recent version is published below: ⭠ Previous Issue ⭣ Newsletter Page ⭣ The Downlink The WikiProject Spaceflight Newsletter 2025 1 — 30 April Volume 3 — Issue 4 Spaceflight Project • Project discussion • Members • Assessment • Open tasks • Popular pages • The Downlink In the News On 1 April, Fram2 became the first crewed mission to enter into a retrograde orbit around Earth's poles. Article of the month Apollo Abort Guidance System The Apollo Abort Guidance System (AGS, also known as Abort Guidance Section) was a backup computer system providing an abort capability in the event of failure of the Lunar Module's primary guidance system (Apollo PGNCS) during descent, ascent or rendezvous. As an abort system, it did not support guidance for a lunar landing. The AGS was designed by TRW independently of the development of the Apollo Guidance Computer and PGNCS. It was the first navigation system to use a strapdown Inertial Measurement Unit rather than a gimbaled gyrostabilized IMU (as used by PGNCS). Although not as accurate as the gimbaled IMU, it provided satisfactory accuracy with the help of the optical telescope and rendezvous radar. It was also lighter and smaller in size. Image of the month Falcon 9 Full Thrust Starting development in 2014, the Falcon 9 Full Thrust is a variant of the Falcon 9 that is the first orbital rocket to have a first stage successfully land vertically after launch. The stage shown here is from the April 2016 SpaceX CRS-8 mission, after landing on the autonomous spaceport drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. Members New Members: Willbill6272 (14 April) Elleh3113 (16 April) Number of active members: 208. Total number of members: 433. April Launches All times stated here are in UTC. See a current list: here. Falcon 9 Block 5 — Fram2 (1 Apr. at 00:46 UTC) (success) Long March 2F/G — Shenzhou 20 (24 Apr. at 09:17 UTC) (success) Atlas V 551 — 27 KuiperSats (28 Apr. at 23:01) (success) Firefly Alpha — LM-400 Demo (29 Apr. at 13:37) (launch failure) Article Statistics This data reflects values from 30 April 2025. Spaceflight articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 7 28 15 8 58 FL 3 4 4 11 FM 123 123 A 1 2 2 5 GA 11 27 33 55 1 127 B 15 84 200 221 1 521 C 45 162 581 774 31 1,593 Start 16 144 1,017 2,584 444 4,205 Stub 9 204 2,049 244 2,506 List 10 120 108 236 1 30 505 Category 1,264 1,264 Disambig 47 47 File 223 223 Portal 55 55 Project 109 109 Redirect 2 42 131 1,243 1,418 Template 528 528 NA 1 1 Other 29 29 Assessed 105 579 2,206 6,064 3,623 751 13,328 Unassessed 14 125 139 Total 105 579 2,206 6,078 3,623 876 13,467 Monthly Changes Since March 2025, four new high-importance, two new mid-importance, twenty new low-importance, and two new NA-importance articles have been created. Four unknown-importance articles have been removed, for a total of 24 new articles. One article has been promoted to Featured Article status. There are also five more B-class articles, eighteen more C-class articles, eleven more Start-class articles, six fewer Stub-class articles, and six more lists. Special thanks to Neopeius for significantly working on some of the Timeline of spaceflight articles (specifically 1953, 54, 55, and most recently 56). Thanks also to Sotakarhu for table work in the latter. Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list. Newsletter contributors: Ships&Space