Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Downlink

THE DOWNLINK
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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.

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Current Issue

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
2026
1 — 30 September
Volume 4 — Issue 9
Spaceflight Project • Project discussion • Members • Assessment • Open tasks • Popular pages • The Downlink
In the News
Article of the month

Sakigake (さきがけ; lit. 'pioneer', 'pathfinder'), known before launch as MS-T5, was Japan's first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the US or the Soviet Union. It aimed to demonstrate the performance of the new launch vehicle, test its ability to escape from Earth gravity, and observe the interplanetary medium and magnetic field. Sakigake also served as a reference probe for Halley's Comet. Early measurements would be used to improve the mission of the Suisei probe launched several months later.

Sakigake was developed by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science for the National Space Development Agency (both of which are now part of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA). It became a part of the Halley Armada together with Suisei, the Soviet Vega probes, the ESA Giotto and the NASA International Cometary Explorer, to explore Halley's Comet during its 1986 sojourn through the inner Solar System.

Image of the month
Hubble Extreme Deep Field

The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (HXDF), released on September 25, 2012, is an image of a portion of space in the center of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image. Representing a total of two million seconds (about 23 days) of exposure time collected over 10 years, the image covers an area of 2.3 arcminutes by 2 arcminutes, or about 80% of the area of the HUDF. This represents about one thirty-two millionth of the sky.

Long-time readers will recognize this image from the July 2021 issue of The Downlink. The explanatory text is excerpted from the original article.

Members

New Members: none

Number of active members: 206. Total number of members: 466.

September Launches
All times stated here are in UTC. See a current list here.


  1. China Pallas-1 — no payload (1 Sep. at 02:00) (success)
  2. United States SpaceX Starship — 26 Starlink (28 Sep. at 12:48) (success)
Article Statistics
This data reflects values from 30 September 2026.

Monthly Changes

Since August 2026, there is one more Mid-importance, nine more Low-importance, eight more NA-importance, and 78 more Unknown-importance articles, for a total of 96 new articles. There are also two more GA-class, four more B-class, 14 more C-class, 34 more Start-class, and 18 more Stub classes articles.

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Newsletter contributors: Ships&Space

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