Talk:2020 in spaceflight

Orphaned references in 2020 in spaceflight
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of 2020 in spaceflight's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "seds-iss": From International Space Station:  From 2019 in spaceflight:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 00:00, 15 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Looks like Nauka moved forward? Nov 2019 according to the reference. --mfb (talk) 01:39, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned references in 2020 in spaceflight
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of 2020 in spaceflight's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "japan": From 2019 in spaceflight:  From International Space Station:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 10:11, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned references in 2020 in spaceflight
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of 2020 in spaceflight's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "sfn": From Cygnus NG-11:  From 2017 in spaceflight: </li> <li>From 2019 in spaceflight: </li> </ul>

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 08:31, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Grouping information a bit better
Hi,

I find these articles and tables quite useful, but I would suggest a more "logical" grouping of related information (in the tables) as follows:


 * Launch (Rocket, LSP, Flight number, Outcome)
 * Mission (Payload, Operator (customer), Orbit, Function, Decay)

Right now I find the information too mixed up and a bit hard to follow Codrin.B (talk) 10:30, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Rocket Lab
There is a new start of RocketLab: https://www.rocketlabusa.com/news/updates/media-release-rocket-lab-to-launch-national-reconnaissance-office-mission/ --(nob) (talk) 18:12, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I was just about to add that over at List of Electron rocket launches. Will be added here as well. OkayKenji (talk page) —Preceding undated comment added 18:26, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh never mind already added it. OkayKenji (talk page) 18:46, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Covid-19 delays
Should there be a section added about the delays (or at-least potential delays to programs caused by the pandemic). I think that the James Webb telescope has been delayed again, among other impacts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.66.53.165 (talk) 15:04, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Maybe make a comment along those lines in the opening paragraph? AmigaClone (talk) 15:22, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Tidiness
In the overview section there are two subheadings that would nicely combine: Internet satellite constellations and Robot satellite servicing. Perhaps combined these two just be "Satellite innovation"? It would be nice if there could be some level of standard so "xxxx in Spaceflight" articles can be read in sequence and easily compared. Grey Wanderer (talk) 21:47, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to remove OSIRIS-REx from Off-World Launches section
OSIRIS-REx is currently listed in the Off-World Launches section, however, as the spacecraft doesn't land on asteroid Bennu, I propose removing it from the list. Per NASA source, OSIRIS-REx won’t land on Bennu to gather the sample, but it will get very close. As it does not actually land on Bennu, OSIRIS-REx won't be launched from the asteroid. Instead, it is continuously flying above it, both during and after the sample collection maneuver. For comparison, imagine a drone hovering near the ground, then extending a robotic arm to touch the ground. Then it flies away, upward. If the drone actually makes a landing, and then takes off, it can be described as a launch. However, if the drone is merely hovering while it makes contact with the surface, then it is still flying. The drone isn't physically supported by the earth, i.e. it doesn't land. This is what OSIRIS-REx's sampling will look like. Kind regards, Hms1103 (talk) 12:37, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
 * You make a good point, I had same thoughts when I saw it had been added. However, it is a pretty cool, albeit unique event, that should be included somewhere. Grey Wanderer (talk) 12:45, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to remove Skylark Micro from suborbital flight list
The Skylark Micro flew to under 27 km. Why is it included on this list? Amateur rockets routinely fly higher then this yet they aren't be included. Many high altitude balloon fly higher then this, generally between 18 and 37 km but they aren't classified as suborbital launches. in 1977, a MiG-25M flew to 37km, should that be considered a spaceflight? I get classifying some launches they make it very close to space (like if a rocket reaches 90 km or past the US def) but it flew only a quarter of the way up. --Jrcraft Yt (talk) 05:40, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * One could argue that it's a step towards an orbital rocket. We don't go strictly by height: The in-flight abort test of Crew Dragon was included, too (apogee 40 km) - but that was done with a system that reaches orbit routinely. Maybe remove Skylark Micro and add only Skylark L flights (intended to reach 90 km)? --mfb (talk) 09:12, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Per Timeline of spaceflight it says "For the purpose of these lists, a spaceflight is defined as any flight that crosses the Kármán line, the FAI-recognized edge of space, which is 100 kilometres (62 miles) above mean sea level (AMSL). The timeline contains all flights which have crossed the edge of space, were intended to do so but failed, or are planned in the near future." OkayKenji (talk • contribs) 22:49, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It didn't cross it, didn't intend to cross it, and the flight is in the past. But if we apply that strictly then we would have to remove the in-flight abort test, and I think it should stay due to its large importance for orbital spaceflight. --mfb (talk) 02:40, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes I agree, just citing a policy that may help in making the decision on whether or not the Skylark Micro should be kept on this list. Perhaps that page (Timeline of spaceflight) could be edited such that there are exceptions. OkayKenji (talk • contribs) 03:50, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Would a better policy regarding suborbital flights be some thing like "Flights which have crossed either the 100km or 50 mile mark or pertain to spaceflight in a meaningful way." We'd have to define what "pertaining to spaceflight in a meaningful way" is. Another solution could be to decide on a "lower bound" for altitude. Like no launches that are under X km. --Jrcraft Yt (talk) 08:06, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Starship orbital tests
In a new interview with Kara Swisher, Musk says "I think we’ll launch Starship sometime next year to orbit.". The article at the moment says "SpaceX aims to begin orbital testing of its fully reusable two-stage-to-orbit vehicle Starship." 2001:16B8:2D0C:2600:3CC3:3E7F:13C9:7D64 (talk) 12:57, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, time to move it to 2021. --mfb (talk) 19:29, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The edit certainly is an improvement, but I think technically they're not suborbital flights, since they didn't reach the Karman line - I'm not sure what the best term is, atmospheric flights maybe? -- 2001:16B8:2D8E:1300:C8DF:BC1C:4C7D:E9B3 (talk) 13:43, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, I just saw a similar discussion took place in the section on Skylark Micro, so maybe the Karman line isn't the deciding factor in this case after all -- 2001:16B8:2D8E:1300:C8DF:BC1C:4C7D:E9B3 (talk) 13:46, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
 * We don't have the 150 meter hops in the suborbital flight table because that would be silly, but the 15-20 km flight(s) will be made with versions designed to go to space later. If we don't see any of these we can rephrase the suborbital flights to hops. --mfb (talk) 00:52, 2 October 2020 (UTC)


 * For this year I would only mention Starship development hops in passing in the 'Rocket Innovation' section, A paragraph along the lines of SpaceX made three atmospheric test flights with prototypes of the second stage of its fully reusable two-stage-to-orbit vehicle Starship. The highest height reached in those flights was 12.5 km. I would not add any test flights to the Suborbital list unless the stated goal for the flight was to pass the Karman line. AmigaClone (talk) 03:51, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to move the "Deep-space rendezvous" section further up
I suggest to move the Deep-space rendezvous section further up as it's shorter than the other tables in the article and likely of higher interest to more readers. Currently it's buried underneath these large tables most readers are probably not interested in as much (resulting in readers not finding or reading that content even though they might be interested in it and inconvenience at the least).

My edits implementing it for this and the 2021 article were reverted by User:Jrcraft Yt with the comment "All the other year in spaceflight series have this below and orbital flights at the start. It's best to keep them consistent with each other."

If you are okay with moving that section up is there a tool to implement this change across all articles of this series?

--Prototyperspective (talk) 20:25, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Oppose. I think it's fine the way it is because the orbital flights list is much more flushed out then deep-space rendezvous one, This is a timeline of spaceflight so it makes sense to have this page's more detailed and informative "flagship" timeline near the top like it's always been. Plus if a reader wants to go to the deep-space rendezvous section, they can just click the link in the contents box which is more convenient. Also, not all years in spaceflight had any deep-space rendezvous (like 1987) so the pages would still have unneeded discrepancy. --Bvbv13 (talk) 20:59, 1 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Could more people please comment on this?
 * Just having a link in the TOC does not make the section very visible. Many readers browse an article by simply scrolling through the article instead of first reading the TOC, which works with most Wikipedia articles as they usually don't have such large tables. Not having any deep-space rendezvouz in some earlier years wouldn't be a problem and instead make the section even shorter and hence easier to include further up without disruption to the page if you prefer having a uniform standardized layout for the article series, which I'd prefer as well but doesn't always necessarily make much sense (as technology and society change which makes a layout standard with a change in the ordering reasonable). I don't think that the "Deep-space rendezvous" section isn't well flushed out – it could be improved (as a sidenote: engaging more readers and editors with the article by paying attention to what more readers are likely to be interested in would facilitate that) and the main value of the section is simply the list with wikilinks to the respective articles.
 * Most of the tables' contents are about a specific type of spaceflight – near-Earth satellites – and most readers are probably more interested in these deep-space rendezvous which, unlike those large sections, would not bury the other content including these timelines considered "flagship" as it's a very short section.
 * --Prototyperspective (talk) 10:46, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Oppose - it's nice to have the table in the article but most of the activity is from launches, it's natural to have them first. --mfb (talk) 19:35, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Oppose - per User:Jrcraft Yt's comment, and as Wikipedia already has several list articles that covers deep space events, namely List of proposed Solar System spacecraft and List of Solar System probes. We also need articles that primarily deals with orbital launches. The former articles prioritize deep space exploration, while the years in spaceflight articles prioritize orbital launches; they are complementary to each other. Kind regards, Hms1103 (talk) 03:15, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Expected maiden flights
I think it is useful to have a section like this and I would like to ask for ideas for improving this section. Thanks. Barecode (talk) 21:49, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The section has the interesting property that it gets shorter and shorter over time. For 2021 it's a big mess, we could limit the list to rockets that have a somewhat clear launch date, not a 2017 slideshow saying that the rocket will certainly launch in 3 years. --mfb (talk) 11:54, 5 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Some launches are delayed so the list is getting shorter. Other launches take place so they are moved to the begining of the article. Next year the list will disappear. For 2021 I added links. Barecode (talk) 11:44, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Went ahead and split the article's orbital launches
I decided the time has come, and split the orbital launches section. There is now 2020 in spaceflight (January–June) and 2020 in spaceflight (July–December). They are formated the same way as previous years that have been split into sections; I used 1960 as a template. For now, I've kept suborbital flights on the main page. --Poomfang (Talk : Contrib) 14:48, 9 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Just want to come out and say that I oppose efforts to split the table or the page. Astrofreak92 (talk) 16:43, 9 November 2020 (UTC)


 * oppose. It doesn't make sense to split up the table. What good is it to the reader if the information they're looking for is split up unnecessarily between pages. Even if we planned to do this, why so close to the end of the year? --Jrcraft Yt (talk) 08:37, 11 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I oppose. this split. This should have been discussed here first, considering you copied, then deleted the list we collectively made. I am against splitting this list because the whole point is to have an article for each year in spaceflight, not an article, and two more articles that have the same information copied and split among them. --Bvbv13 (talk) 09:00, 11 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I oppose this split as well. In addition to being discussed here first, any discussion relative to a possible split for a 'year in spaceflight' should wait until it's known how many launches (orbital and suborbital) and EVAs for a particular year have occurred. So far, there has been less launches than 2017 this year. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AmigaClone (talk • contribs) 04:30, 22 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I started WP:PROD based on the clear consensus here. --mfb (talk) 05:54, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Done. --mfb (talk) 23:13, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Launches from the Moon stats
With only one lunar orbital launch occurring this year as a suis generis thing and likely one or fewer expected over the next few years, the question of lunar launch stats is unlikely to matter and there's no real reason to compile stats separate from the launch table. But if/when they do reach a sizable number annually what's the play? Adding lunar launch stats to the stats section, making a separate off-world launch stats section, or making a new page for off-world launches where their stats will appear separately? Astrofreak92 (talk) 23:01, 3 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I think the play should be to either add it to the normal orbital launch statistics (it was an orbital launch in 2020) or keep it in a separate chart on the same page. I don't think its a good call to create separate articles unless we also want a separate suborbital section. Having one page with all of the launches of X year is something that shouldn't be changed. So the question is do we want a separate lists (on the same page) or a combined list?
 * Personally, I'm in favor of separate lists because orbital launches are different then suborbital launches (hence why they have a separate list) and launches from the Moon are different than launches from Earth. I don't think there should be a "minimum limit" for the same reason I wouldn't take of the orbital launches in the 1957 in spaceflight page for having only 3 orbital attempts. --Jrcraft Yt (talk) 08:19, 6 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with a separate list in every year where we have these launches. The 1972 list has them between launches from Earth, but they are very different. Don't include them in the orbital launch statistics, however. --mfb (talk) 08:43, 6 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I would agree on the concept of separate lists. I would recommend that the for now those lists be split between from earth and from anywhere but earth. In other words, say one year there are three lunar orbital launches, a launch from Mars and a third from an asteroid or comet. I would propose that those five launches being in a single list. AmigaClone (talk) 04:09, 11 December 2020 (UTC)


 * So is the launch of Chang'e 5 ascent module from lunar surface counted towards China's launch total? From the discussion here, I am not sure whether it was counted. 98.207.237.179 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 19:41, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * It shouldn't be. You can count to check. --mfb (talk) 05:09, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Starship Suborbital Test Flights
Why hasn't the Starship Suborbital Test Flights have been included in the Suborbital section? If we only list flights above the Kármán line, pleaes note that the flight of Skylark Micro reached an apogee of just under 29km.

user:mnw2000 11:28, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Because no one added it yet. There is no consensus how to deal with atmospheric flights that are clearly spaceflight-related but do not attempt to reach space. We don't want to include every 1 meter hover test of Starhopper, but I feel the recent flight is relevant enough to be added. It certainly got more attention than most other suborbital flights (and more than many routine orbital flights). I added it. --mfb (talk) 04:16, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Did someone remove it? Why?

user:mnw2000 23:37, 14 December 2020 (UTC)


 * @Zegwk: Can you comment here please? diff --mfb (talk) 05:41, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Zegwk (talk) 11:24, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

This page is called "2020 in Spaceflight", so there shouldn't be any flights that weren't intended to reach space (80 or 100 km, depends on who you ask). It doesn't matter how much attention this specific flight got. It wasn't a spaceflight so it shouldn't be included in this page.
 * It's clearly in the field of spaceflight, and it happened in 2020. If we go by the article name as you suggest then it needs to be in the article. This article isn't called "Launches to space in 2020". --mfb (talk) 05:15, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Cape Canaveral
Should there be a comment along the lines that Cape Canaveral Air force Station was been renamed to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on December 9th, 2020? AmigaClone (talk) 11:55, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Partial Failure vs. Partial Success
I know this amounts to semantics, but is a test flight (i.e. Rocket 3) a partial failure if it achieved most of its objectives? Or is the only objective that matters making it to orbit? If so, the recent launch of Rocket was a failure in that it did not reach orbit or it was a partial success since it was a test launch whose only "failure" was not reaching orbit.

Let's be positive when we can, especially with test launches that have several objectives. (Think about the test flight of Starship SN8. It was a suborbital flight which had several objectives, the last being a soft landing on its landing legs. "The flight was perfect. The landing not so much!"

How about this for the result: Test: Partial Success, Orbit: Not reached.

user:mnw2000 13:03, 16 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Test flight or not, an orbital launch is an orbital launch. Certain launches shouldn't have different success criteria over others simply because it is a new rocket. We wouldn't classify Vega VV17 as partial success since it didn't reach orbit, but still reached space. The table is meaningless without consistency. --Jrcraft Yt (talk) 17:40, 16 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Rockets that try to achieve orbit but fail to do so are labeled failure. We do that in every spaceflight page. "Partial failure" would mean it reached an orbit but not the right one. The difference between partial failure and success can sometimes be problematic (when is a deviation strong enough?) but at least orbit vs. no orbit is pretty unambiguous. --mfb (talk) 05:38, 19 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Theoretically, if all the public documentation of this mission had been for a Sub-orbital test flight of an orbital vehicle would this mission had been considered a success?


 * Also, what would happen in terms of a year in spaceflight wiki article if in a mission with public documentation declaring that it was a suborbital test of an orbital class rocket, but due to a previously hidden code actually reached orbit? AmigaClone (talk) 02:24, 27 December 2020 (UTC)


 * In that scenario, probably something like: (Suborbital launch, partial failure, goes in the statistics of "achieved accidentally"?) since we don't put launches like Atras 3.2 in the suborbital category. --Jrcraft Yt (talk) 03:51, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Long March
Why are Long March rockets treated as one rocket type (see orbital launch stats, by rocket) when there is such a broad range of designs? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.12.159.114 (talk) 16:18, 19 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I suspect that Long March is treated as a rocket family since that is what the organization that designs and the one that launches Long March rockets calls them. AmigaClone (talk) 02:30, 27 December 2020 (UTC)