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Volume 1 — Issue 7
Spaceflight Project • Project discussion • Members • Assessment • Open tasks • Popular pages • The Downlink
In the News!
On April 9 at 07:42:41 (UTC), Soyuz MS-18 successfully launched from Baikonur Site 31 with Oleg Novitsky , Pyotr Dubrov and Mark T. Vande Hei arriving at the ISS 3 hours later to join Expedition 64 members.
April 12 marks the 60th year of human spaceflight, since Vostok 1 launched in 1961 with Yuri Gagarin onboard.
April 12 also marks 40 years since the first space shuttle launch. STS-1 spent 2 days, 6 hours in space in 1981 landing on April 14.
On April 16, NASA selected the SpaceX Starship Human Landing System for crewed landing on the Moon.
On April 17 at 01:34 (UTC), Soyuz MS-17 departed from the ISS and landed at Kazakh Steppe over 3 hours later ending Sergey Ryzhikov , Sergey Kud-Sverchkov , Kathleen Rubins mission of 184 days and 23 hours.
Also on the 17th , Expedition 64 on the ISS ended marking the start of Expedition 65 .
On April 19, the Mars helicopter Ingenuity completed the first powered flight using atmospheric lift on another planet.
Earth Day came around for another year, 51 years after it was first held on April 22, 1970.
On April 23 at 09:49:02 (UTC), SpaceX Crew-2 launched at LC-39A with Shane Kimbrough , K. Megan McArthur , Akihiko Hoshide and Thomas Pesquet arriving at the ISS 1 day later to join Expedition 65 members.
Michael Collins who was the Apollo Command Module pilot, dies on April 28, 2021 aged 90.
On April 29, China launched a Tianhe station core module to low Earth orbit, starting a 2 year effort to build a space station.
Article of the month.
Michael Collins was an American astronaut who flew the Apollo 11 command module Columbia around the Moon in 1969 while his crewmates, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin , made the first crewed landing on the surface . He was selected as part of NASA 's third group of 14 astronauts in 1963 and flew in space twice.
Image of the month.
The unofficial flag of earth day which is made of the "Blue Marble " image taken onboard of the Apollo 17 spacecraft with a blue background.
Members
New Members:
Number of active members: 112.
Total number of members: 325.
April Launches All times stated here are in UTC.
Falcon 9 – Starlink V1.0-L23 (7th at 16:34:18) Success
Long March 4B – Shiyan 6-02 (8th at 23:01) Success
Soyuz-2.1a – MS-18 (9th at 07:42:40) Success
Falcon 9 – Crew-2 (23rd at 22:14:08) Success
Soyuz-2.1b – OneWeb 6 (25th at 22:14:08) Success
Delta IV Heavy – NROL-82 (26th at 20:47) Success
Long March 6 – Qilu 1 & Qilu 4 (27th at 03:20) Success
Vega – Pléiades Neo 3 (29th at 01:50:00) Success
Long March 6 – Tianhe 1 (29th at 03:23:15) Success
Falcon 9 – Starlink V1.0-L24 (29rd at 03:44) Success
Long March 6 – Yaogan 34 (27th at 03:20) Success
May Launches Launch dates can change. See a current list: here .
Falcon 9 – Starlink V1.0-L25
GSLV Mk.2 – GISAT 1
Long March 7 – Tianzhou 2
Atlas 5 – SBIRS GEO Flight 5
Soyuz – OneWeb 7
Article Statistics This data reflects values from the 30 April 2021.
Spaceflight articles by quality and importance
Quality
Importance
Top
High
Mid
Low
NA
???
Total
FA
7
18
4
7
36
FL
4
4
8
FM
97
97
GA
11
22
35
53
121
B
1
49
37
48
135
C
56
160
534
489
11
1,250
Start
37
158
1,115
2,235
373
3,918
Stub
7
244
2,191
226
2,668
List
14
130
79
211
1
435
Category
1,033
1,033
Disambig
48
48
File
202
202
Portal
55
55
Project
57
57
Redirect
1,131
1,131
Template
495
495
Other
38
38
Assessed
126
544
2,052
5,238
3,162
611
11,733
Unassessed
56
56
Total
126
544
2,052
5,238
3,162
667
11,789
Monthly Changes
Since March, 39 new pages have been added to Spaceflight. There is 1 less GA-class, with 3 more files, 4 more B-class, 6 more C-class, 7 more start-class and 5 new stub-class articles.
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Newsletter contributors: Balon Greyjoy and Terasail