Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Timeline of spaceflight working group

This working group is responsible for the creation and maintenance of lists and timelines related to spaceflight, particularly the article timeline of spaceflight and related pages.

Duties
This working group is currently responsible for:
 * Creation and maintenance of articles related to the timeline of spaceflight
 * Creation and maintenance of launch logs and lists for individual rockets or families.
 * Updating lists and timelines relating to current or future events.
 * Placing relevant links on pages about spacecraft. (eg. a link to 2005 in spaceflight on the STS-114 page.)
 * Maintaining the Years in spaceflight categorisation system
 * Maintaining templates relevant to the working group

[Year] in spaceflight articles
Page naming should follow the format [Year] in spaceflight, replacing "[year]" with the year that the list is documenting. (eg. 2024 in spaceflight)

In order to facilitate consistency throughout the timeline, the D MMMM (day-month) long date format should be used within articles, for example 28 October. British English should be used throughout, with the exceptions of place names and organisations within the United States, or another English-speaking country, where the name differs, for example, the United States Department of Defense, or the Kennedy Space Center. All times should be in UTC. Within tables, commonly repeated terms such as "Space Centre" should be dropped, and if possible, word wrapping should be avoided.

Lead
The first item on the page should be an infobox. Infobox Year in spaceflight (code right) should be used. For full instructions on its use, please refer to. The infobox should contain a freely-licensed image which either represents or shows a significant event that occurred that year.

The next thing on the page should be a summary of events that took place that year, including space exploration, human spaceflights, and launch failures. This should be illustrated where possible with free-use images. Remember that this section will appear to the left of the infobox, so unless the lead section is sufficiently long as to pass the bottom of the infobox, all images should be aligned to the left. There should also be a brief definition of the term "spaceflight", such as "The internationally accepted definition of a spaceflight is any flight which crosses the Kármán line, 100 kilometres above sea level.", early on in the lead.

The last two lines of the lead section should be:

Which prevent display issues that can be caused by either the table of contents growing too big, or the infobox protruding into the launches section.

Launches
The first section of the article should be entitled "Launches". It should contain a comprehensive list of all rocket launches that crossed, or are/were intended to cross the Kármán line in the year which that article documents.

This list should be formatted using a series of templates. First of all, the navigation template, undefined, should be transcluded. The first parameter of this template should be the year (eg: for 2024). This should be followed on the next line by the table header, TLS-H2, which should also be transcluded, but requires no parameters.

A new subsection should be started for each month, using a level three header. A colspan of 8 should be set to avoid breaking the table. For example: |colspan="8"|

January


Individual launches are listed using the templates TLS-RL and TLS-PL:
 * Transcluded from Template:TLS-RL/doc

Flags should be inserted, using the flagicon template, to show the nationalities of the rocket, launch site, LSP and spacecraft.

All items that require it should be linked on the first occurrence. The link should encompass the full name. In the case of rockets, the configuration should not be linked unless there is no space between it and the rocket name (eg Ariane 5ECA not Ariane 5ECA, and Delta II 7925 not Delta II 7925), and that the configuration is not necessary to identify the type of rocket (eg Delta 2913 not Delta 2913). Rocket names which contain version numbers rather than configuration numbers should be linked in full (eg Saturn V not Saturn V). Missiles should use their full designation when being launched as missiles, but the common name if conducting an orbital or civilian launch. (eg. SM-65B Atlas B for missile tests, Atlas B for launching SCORE).

At the end of the launches section, close the table using |}

Then insert another instance of TLS-M, the same as above.

Deep Space Rendezvous
The Deep Space Rendezvous section should immediately follow the launches section. It should contain a table listing of all encounters between spacecraft and astronomical objects, such as planets, in the year. Note that the spelling "rendezvous" should be used, not "rendez-vous". The same table format should be used in all articles: {| class=wikitable width="100%" !Date (GMT) !Spacecraft !Event !Remarks

Deep Space Rendezvous sections should only occur in articles where they are required. There should be no Deep Space Rendezvous section in articles prior to 1959, or in the 1960, 1984, 1987 or 1988 articles.

EVAs
The EVAs section should follow the Deep Space Rendezvous section if present, or otherwise the table of launches. It should list all spacewalks and moonwalks conducted during that year. It should only be present in years where EVAs occurred. There should be no EVAs section for years prior to 1965, or for 1967, 1968, 1970, 1975, 1976, 1980, 1981 or 1989, or for any year which has not yet occurred. The same template format should be used for all EVA sections: {| class="wikitable" width="100%" !Start Date/Time !Duration !End Time !Spacecraft !Crew !Remarks

Orbital launch summary
The orbital launch summary should follow the EVAs section where present, otherwise the Deep Space Rendezvous or Launches section, depending on the article. It provides statistical information on the numbers and types of orbital launches conducted during that year. For the purpose of statistics, catalogued suborbital launches are also included in this section. This section should be included in all articles from 1957 onwards. It should be split into three level three subsections:

This subsection gives statistics for orbital launches by country. It starts with a pie chart, which is generated using the template TLS-PC.
 * By country

This should be followed by a table showing the raw data displayed by the pie chart: {| align="left" class="wikitable sortable" ! Country ! Launches ! Successes ! Failures ! Partial failures ! Remarks

Note that former Soviet republics (eg. Ukraine) should be listed as "Russia/CIS". The section should be followed with a clearing linebreak to prevent the pie chart overlapping into the next subsection

This subsection gives statistics for individual rockets. It consists of one table: {| class="wikitable sortable" ! Rocket ! Country ! Launches ! Successes ! Failures ! Partial failures ! Remarks
 * By rocket

This subsection gives statistics for different orbital regimes. Unlike the rest of the article, in this section a "success" is a launch which reached the planned orbit, and a "failure" is one which did not. For more details, see Outcomes. The section contains one table, and should list the following trajectories in the following order:
 * By orbit

Orbits to which no launches were made should be removed.

Talk pages
Talk pages should be tagged by placing at the top.

Mission outcomes
A standard set of criteria are used to determine the outcome of missions, to ensure consistency within the articles.
 * A mission is considered successful if
 * The mission is complete, and
 * All objectives have been accomplished
 * A mission is considered a failure if
 * No primary objectives are met, or
 * There is an LOC or LOCV scenario on a crewed flight, or
 * The rocket fails to orbit (does not apply to sub-orbital launches), or
 * The spacecraft is placed inexorably in a useless orbit, or
 * The spacecraft fails to contact the ground after separation, or
 * The spacecraft malfunctions and cannot be recovered with a significant portion of its mission remaining
 * A mission is considered a partial failure if
 * Some primary mission objectives are met, but some are not, or
 * The spacecraft malfunctions and cannot be recovered, but has completed a significant portion of its mission, or
 * The spacecraft operates, or is predicted to operate for less than its design life, or
 * The carrier rocket places the payload into an incorrect orbit, but
 * The spacecraft can still operate in the incorrect orbit, or
 * The spacecraft can correct its own orbit

A distinction should be made between launch failures and spacecraft failures. Note that spacecraft-induced launch failures should be considered launch failures and not spacecraft failures, however a note to this effect should be placed in the remarks field. No operational spacecraft should be listed as an outright failure.

The entries in the outcome field should be one or more of the following:
 * Operational
 * Successful
 * Unknown
 * Launch failure
 * Spacecraft failure
 * Partial launch failure
 * Partial spacecraft failure

The nowrap template should be placed around the longest entry to prevent wrapping. The field should be left blank for spacecraft awaiting launch.

Resources
http://www.shuttlepresskit.com/

Useful for Shuttle Mission details and information, officially released by the United Space Alliance Space Agencies.

https://planet4589.org/space/gcat/data/derived/launchlog.html

This list, by Jonathan McDowell has a complete list of all orbital spaceflights up to early 2006. We just need to format it for Wikipedia, and add sub-orbital and more up-to-date flights.

http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/ Defunct

A nice site with information about current and some future launches, and launch log's for previous years.

http://www.orbireport.com/Log.html

Another list, this time including more information on sub-orbital flights, but only in 2006.

http://www.astronautix.com

A very useful resource, all spaceflights, orbital and suborbital, up to 2005.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com

Useful for orbital flights since 2004, and also upcoming flights.

http://www.nasa.gov

Useful for NASA missions, past present and future.

http://space.skyrocket.de/chrono.htm

Useful for all past missions.

Join us
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