Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Downlink/2025/April

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	The Downlink	The WikiProject Spaceflight Newsletter
	The Downlink	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
Quality	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.

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Newsletter contributors: Ships&Space