A number of issues are still under discussion:

• Introducing better defined assessment criteria and an A-class review process
• Setting clearer importance criteria for assessing articles
• Establishing a joint task force with the Astronomy and Solar System projects to cover space telescopes and planetary probes
• Defining the roles of projects, taskforces and working groups, and processes for establishing new ones
• Improving the profile and activity of the project

Much of the current discussion is taking place onthe WikiProject Spaceflight talk page, however there is still some discussion on theoriginal proposal page.

A report onpopular pages from December 2010 revealed surprising trends in readers' interests.Boeing X-37 was the most popular article within the project's scope, withSpaceX Dragon in second withGlobal Positioning System in third place. The top seven articles were all assessed as C-class, with the remainder of the top ten being Good Articles. It was noted with some concern thatmoon landing conspiracy theories was more popular thanmoon landing.

A discussion regarding whether missiles warranted inclusion within the project scope was conducted, and resulted in the continued inclusion of missiles.

The last remaining articles tagged with the banner of the former Human Spaceflight WikiProject were re-tagged with the WikiProject Spaceflight banner. The last banner was removed on 8 January, and the template has since been deleted. The project is thankful toChiZeroOne for his work in this field.

Concerns were raised that the new article reporting system was not working correctly, however it was noted that there is sometimes a delay before articles appear on the list.

Discussion regarding the existence of the separate spaceflight and space exploration category structures led to amass CfD being filed on 10 January to abolish the space exploration categories, merging them into their counterparts in the spaceflight category structure. This was successful, and the exploration categories have been removed. Several other categorisation issues remain unresolved.

A proposal was made to standardise some of the infoboxes used by the project, the future ofTemplate:Infobox spacecraft (edit |talk |history |links |watch |logs) was discussed, and design work began on a replacement.Template:Rocket specifications-all (edit |talk |history |links |watch |logs) was nominated for deletion and subsequently kept due to extant substitutions, however it was noted that the template had been deprecated byWikiProject Rocketry. Concerns were also raised that the existing infoboxes were not well-equipped to handle spacecraft which operated in more than one orbit, or whose orbits changed over the course of their missions (which in practise is most of them).

Five members of the project gave interviews for theWikipedia Signpost, and a report on the project, authored bySMasters (talk ·contribs), is expected to be published in the 7 February edition of theSignpost. It is hoped that this will raise interest in and awareness of the project.

On 22 January, anH-IIB launched the secondH-II Transfer Vehicle,Kounotori 2, to resupply theInternational Space Station. It arrived at the station on 27 January. Less than a day after its arrival, another cargo mission was launched to the station;Progress M-09M departedBaikonur early in the morning of 28 January, docking on 30 January. In addition to payloads to resupply the station, the Progress spacecraft is carrying a small subsatellite,Kedr, which will be deployed in February. Kedr does not currently have an article.Progress M-08M departed on 24 January to make thePirs module available for Progress M-09M, and has since reentered the atmosphere. Its article needs to be updated to reflect the successful completion of its mission.

TheNanoSail-D2 satellite, which failed to deploy fromFASTSAT in December, unexpectedly separated from its parent craft and began operations on 18 January, with itssolar sail deploying on 21 January.

Nine orbital launches are scheduled to occur in February, beginning with the launch of the firstGeo-IK-2 satellite;Geo-IK-2 No.11, atop aRokot/Briz-KM, on the first day of the month. Articles need to be written for the Geo-IK-2 series of satellites, as well as for Geo-IK-2 No.11 itself, and the Briz-KM upper stage that will be used to insert it into orbit.

AMinotaur I rocket will launchNRO L-66, a classified payload for the USNational Reconnaissance Office, on 5 February. The payload has not yet been identified, however once more details are known, it will need an article. Iran is expected to launch theRasad 1 andFajr 1 satellites in February, with 14 February the reported launch date. The satellites will fly aboard a single rocket; either the firstSimorgh or the thirdSafir. Once this launch occurs, the satellites will need articles, and the article on their carrier rocket will require updating.

The secondAutomated Transfer Vehicle,Johannes Kepler, is scheduled to launch on 15 February to resupply the ISS. Docking is expected to occur on 23 February. 23 February will also see the much-delayed launch ofGlory atop aTaurus-XL 3110 rocket. This will be the first Taurus launch since the launch failure in early 2009 which resulted in the loss of theOrbiting Carbon Observatory. In addition to Glory, threeCubeSats will be deployed;KySat-1,Hermes andExplorer-1 [PRIME]. KySat and Hermes require articles, whilst the article on Explorer-1 [PRIME] needs to be updated.

On 24 February, aSoyuz-2.1b/Fregat rocket will launch the firstGlonass-K1 satellite;Glonass-K1 No.11. Articles are needed for the series of spacecraft, as well as for the specific satellite being launched. It is likely that aKosmos designation will be given to the payload when it reaches orbit. In the evening of 24 February,Space ShuttleDiscovery will begin its final mission,STS-133, carrying thePermanent Multipurpose Module, a conversion of theLeonardo MPLM, to the ISS. Other payloads include anExPRESS Logistics Carrier, and theRobonaut2 experimental robot. The first manned mission of 2011,Discovery's six-man crew will transfer equipment to the station, and two EVAs will be performed. The launch has already been scrubbed five times, beforeDiscovery was rolled back to theVehicle Assembly Building to inspect and repair cracks on itsExternal Tank.

At some point in February, aLong March 3B rocket is expected to launch two navigation satellites;Compass-M2 andCompass-M3, as part of theCompass navigation system. The date of this launch is currently unknown. Both satellites will require articles once more information is available. A PSLV launch, carrying theResourcesat-2,X-Sat andYouthSat spacecraft, is expected to launch from theSatish Dhawan Space Centre towards the end of the month, probably between 20 and 23 February.

Stop press: The Rokot launch was conducted at 14:00 UTC on 1 February, and at the time of writing it appears to have ended in failure, due to a suspected upper stage malfunction. The spacecraft is in orbit, it is not clear at the time of writing whether it will be salvageable.

Reaction Engines Skylon is currently undergoingpeer review, its discussion page can be found atWikipedia:Peer review/Reaction Engines Skylon/archive1. A user requested feedback on major changes which had been made to the article, however at the time of writing no responses have been offered.

Following up on the issues covered in the last issue, the requested move ofMissile Range Instrumentation Ship toTracking ship was successful, with the article being renamed. The discussion concerning types of launch and landing resulted in a proposal to mergeVTVL intoVTOL, however this has been met with some opposition. Several other options have been suggested onTalk:VTVL. The large scale deletion of mis-tagged Soviet images on Commons went ahead, with most of the useful ones having already been backed-up locally under fair use criteria.

Discussion was held regarding the naming of spaceflight-related articles. Concerns were raised regarding inconsistency in article titles and disambiguators.A project guideline was adopted to standardise titles, with the parenthesised disambiguators "(satellite)" and "(spacecraft)" being adopted as standards for spacecraft, and the exclusion of manufacturers' names from article titles was recommended. Issues regarding Japanese spacecraft with two names, the correct names for early Apollo missions, and dealing with acronyms and abbreviated names remain unresolved.

A large number of articles were moved to conform to the standard disambiguation pattern. In addition, several Requested Moves were debated. A proposal to moveSpaceX Dragon toDragon (spacecraft), which began prior to the adoption of the standardised disambiguators, was successful.Atmospheric reentry was subject to two requested moves, firstly one which would have seen it renamedspacecraft atmospheric reentry, which was unsuccessful, however a second proposal shortly afterwards saw it moved toatmospheric entry. A proposal currently under discussion could seeLunar rover (Apollo) renamedLunar Roving Vehicle

Questions surrounding the transliteration of Russian names resurfaced, with a proposal to renameVladimir Chelomey toVladimir Chelomei being closed with no consensus, and a proposal to renameYury Usachov toYuri Usachev ongoing.

Several long-standing merger proposals were closed. A proposal to mergeVenera 15 andVenera 16 intoVenera 15 and 16 was closed as no consensus, with the combined page being moved toVenera 4V-2 to reduce the overlap in the articles' scopes.Returnable satellite was merged intoFanhui Shi Weixing.

Experimental Assembly of Structures in EVA and Assembly Concept for Construction of Erectable Space Structures was nominated for Good Article reassessment due to concerns over the article's quality. Doubts were also expressed over the thoroughness of the original review conducted upon its nomination for GA status. It was also suggested that the article's title may not be the most common name for the experiment, and that it might be necessary to move the page. Concerns were also raised regarding whetherSpace Interferometry Mission was up-to-date, however these are being addressed.Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet looks likely to be promoted to GA status.

Help was requested for adding citations toList of Mir spacewalks. A request was made thatSTS-88 be reviewed against the B class criteria, and suggestions for improvements made. Another user requested improvements to the articleYuri Gagarin, with a view to having the article promoted to featured status in time for the fiftieth anniversary of hisVostok 1 mission. As a result of this request, Yuri Gagarin is this month's selected article.

Questions were raised as to whether an article or category should be created to cover derelict satellites. The categorisation of spacecraft by the type of rocket used to place them into orbit was also suggested. In another categorisation issue, it was questioned whetherSpace law should fall under space or spaceflight.

Stop press:Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet has now been promoted to GA status.

№	Article	Movement
1	Space Shuttle Challenger disaster	↑14(15)
2	Richard Branson	↑5(7)
3	Neil Armstrong	↑2(5)
4	Space Shuttle Columbia disaster	↑16(20)
5	Global Positioning System	↓2(3)
6	Apollo 11	↑2(8)
7	Satellite	↑4(11)
8	Space Shuttle Challenger	↑42(50)
9	Apollo 13	↓3(6)
10	NASA	↓1(9)

For the full list of the top 1,500 popular pages within the project, seeWikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Popular pages (or thearchived record for January).

His article describes him and his spaceflight experience:

The article is currently assessed as C class, and had been assessed as B class prior to the criteria being redefined. Although a full reassessment has not yet been made, it seems close to the B class criteria, however details on his spaceflight experiences are somewhat lacking. It has been requested that the article be developed to Featured status by April, in time for the fiftieth anniversary of his mission.

Aninvitation template has been created in an effort to attract new users to the project. Discussion was also held regarding the creation of a list of common templates, however no conclusions were reached. A proposal was made to implement an A-class assessment process, however editors are undecided about whether it would be best to copy the system used by another project such asWP:MILHIST, or to develop one specifically for the requirements of this project.

User:ChiZeroOne has set up acollaboration page in his userspace, initially focussing on articles related toSkylab. Collaboration pages were at one point proposed as part of the structure of the Spaceflight project itself, however no consensus was achieved on the issue. If this collaboration is successful, it could open the door to a reevaluation of that situation.

Five orbital launches were conducted in February, out of nine planned. The first, that of theGeo-IK-2 No.11 satellite atop aRokot/Briz-KM ended in failure after the upper stage malfunctioned. The Rokot has since been grounded pending a full investigation; the satellite is in orbit, but has been determined to be unusable for its intended mission. A replacement is expected to launch within the year. A general article onGeo-IK-2 satellites is needed, to supplement those on the individual satellites.

A Minotaur I rocket launchedUSA-225, or NROL-66, on 6 February following a one-day delay. The second Automated Transfer Vehicle, Johannes Kepler, was successfully launched on 16 February to resupply the ISS. Docking occurred successfully on 24 February, several hours beforeSpace ShuttleDiscovery launched on its final flight,STS-133.Discovery docked with the ISS on 26 February, delivering theLeonardo module and anExPRESS Logistics Carrier to the station. Following several delays, aSoyuz-2.1b/Fregat rocket launched the firstGlonass-K1 satellite;Glonass-K1 No.11, on 26 February. It is currently unclear as to whether the satellite has received aKosmos designation or not.

Seven launches are expected to occur in March. On 4 March, theGlory satellite will launch atop aTaurus-XL 3110 rocket. Three CubeSats will be also be deployed by the Taurus;KySat-1,Hermes andExplorer-1 [Prime]. KySat and Hermes require articles, whilst the article on Explorer-1 [PRIME] needs to be updated. This launch was originally scheduled for February, but following a scrubbed launch attempt, it was delayed.

4 March will also see the launch of thefirst flight of the secondX-37B, atop anAtlas V 501. An article is needed for that flight, which will probably receive aUSA designation once it reaches orbit. On 8 March,Discovery is expected to land, bringing to an end the STS-133 mission, andretiring from service 27 years after itsmaiden flight. On 11 March, aDelta IV Medium+(4,2) will launch theNROL-27 payload. Whilst the identity of this payload is classified, it is widely believed to be aSatellite Data Systemcommunications satellite, bound for either amolniya orgeostationary orbit. An article for this payload is required. 16 March will see the return to Earth ofSoyuz TMA-01M, carrying three members of the ISSExpedition 26 crew.

APolar Satellite Launch Vehicle is expected to deploy theResourcesat-2,X-Sat andYouthSat spacecraft during a launch in March. The flight has been delayed several times, and was expected to have launched last month, however it is currently scheduled to occur no earlier than 20 March. On 29 March, anAriane 5ECA will launch theYahsat 1A andNew Dawn communications satellites. Both currently require articles. On 30 March, aSoyuz-FG will launch the mannedSoyuz TMA-21 mission to theInternational Space Station carrying threeExpedition 27 crewmembers.

On 31 March, aProton-M/Briz-M launch will carry theSES-3 andKazsat-2 spacecraft into orbit, in the first dual-launch of commercial communications satellites on a Proton. Several other launches may occur in March, however their status is unclear. Last month, a Long March 3B rocket was expected to launch two navigation satellites;Compass-M2 andCompass-M3, however this launch did not take place. It is unclear if it has been delayed to March, or further. The launch of theTianlian 2 communications satellite on aLong March 3C may also be conducted in March, or possibly April. Both the Compass and Tianlian launches would occur from the same launch pad, which requires a turnaround of almost a month between launches, so it is unlikely that both will happen in March. ASafir launch, which had been expected in February, now appears to have been delayed to April, but given the secrecy of the Iranian space programme, this is unclear.

Category:Derelict satellites orbiting Earth was created as a result of discussion surrounding the categorisation of derelict satellites. Concerns have also been raised that satellites are being listed as no longer being in orbit whilst still in orbit and derelict, and a discussion was held on how their status could be verified. An effort to categorise spacecraft by the type of rocket used to launch them is underway, however the categorisation of satellites by country of launch was rejected.

It was reported that asidebar has been created for articles related to the core concepts of spaceflight. Editors noted that it should only be used for core concepts, and not where it would conflict with an infobox. An anonymous user requested the creation of an article onmoon trees. It was pointed out that the subjectalready had an article, and a redirect was created at the title proposed by the anonymous user.

Concerns were raised regarding the quality of the articleJapan's space development. Editors noted that the article appeared to be a poorly-translated copy of an article from the Japanese Wikipedia, although there have been some signs of improvement. Discussion regarding moving the article toJapanese space program is ongoing, however a move request has not yet been filed.

A particular concern was raised regarding false claims in the articleVan Allen radiation belt. In one case a scientist to whom one of the claims had been attributed was contacted, and clarified that he had made a remark to that effect as a joke in the 1960s, but was not entirely sure how or why it had been included in the article. Other concerns were raised before the discussion moved toWikiProject Astronomy.

A question was raised regarding the copyright status of images credited to both NASA and ESA, particularly with regard to images of the launch of theJohannes Kepler ATV. The discussion reached no general conclusions, however it was found that the specific images that were suggested for inclusion in the article could be used, since they were explicitly declared to be in the public domain.

A template,Template:Spaceflight landmarks (edit |talk |history |links |watch |logs), was created to cover landmarks in the United States that are related to spaceflight. Several sources of public-domain NASA images were also discussed, and it was noted that almost all NASA images are public domain, however there are some exceptions.

It has been proposed thatLeonardo MPLM be merged withPermanent Multipurpose Module since the two cover separate uses of the same spacecraft. A review of the articleSTS-88 has also been requested.

Three new Good Articles have been listed:Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet,Bold Orion andSA-500D.Orion (spacecraft) was delisted after concerns that it contained out-of-date content. SA-500D is currently undergoing good article reassessment, using the community reassessment method, after the review of its good article nomination was criticised for being lenient and not sufficiently thorough.Mir,Mark E. Kelly andReaction Engines Skylon have been nominated for Good Article status and are awaiting review, whilstList of Mir spacewalks is undergoing a peer review with a view to it becoming a featured list.

Presumably, the lack of collaboration is due to folks not being aware of what's going on, so here's a quick rundown of some of the ways you get involved in the group effort. Firstly, and most importantly, it'd be fantastic if more members got involved in the discussions ongoing at the project's main talk page, found atWT:SPACEFLIGHT. There are several discussions ongoing there, such as the relaunch of the spacecraft template, requests for assistance with various assessment and copyright queries, and conversations regarding category organisations, which affect many more articles, and thus editors, than are currently represented in the signatures so far.

Secondly, it was established earlier on in the project's formation that a great way to attract more editors would be to develop some good or featured topics. There are a couple of efforts ongoing to try to see this idea to fruition, such as theSpace stations working group and ChiZeroOne's owncollaboration page, currently focussed onSkylab-related articles. These pages, however, have been notably lacking in activity lately, which is a shame, as their aims, given enough editor input, would really see the project furthering itself. Similarly, there are a number of requests for assessment for articles to be promoted to GA class, among other things, on theOpen tasks page, which lists all of the activities needing input from members. If everyone could add this page to their watchlists and swing by it regularly, we could power through the good topics in extremely short order! Other things that could do with being added to people's watchlists includePortal:Spaceflight/Next launch‎, the many templates atTemplate:Launching/Wrappers and the task list atPortal:Spaceflight/Tasks.

Finally, I'd like to try and get people involved in finally settling the organisational problem we have with reference to the task forces and working groups. Whilst theTimeline of spaceflight working group is a continuation of the old Timeline of spaceflight WikiProject and thus is ticking over nicely and the space stations working group has been mentioned previously in this editorial, the task forces (Human spaceflight andUnmanned spaceflight) in particular are currently dead in the water. I'm unsure as to whether or not this is because people are unaware of their existence, they clash too much with one another and the rest of the project or because people don't see a need for them, but if interested parties could make themselves known and others voice suggestions for getting rid of them, we can decide either if they're worth keeping and get them running again, or do away with a layer of bureaucracy and close them down. Any thoughts on the matter would be much appreciated.

In summary, then, we've got a great project going here, with a nice set of articles, a good editor base and lots of ways of getting involved. Thus, a plea goes out to everyone to get involved, get editing with the other project members, and hopefully we'll see ourselves take off in a manner not dissimilar to the trajectory dear oldDiscovery took last week. Many thanks for everyone's hard work so far, and poyekhali! :-)

Satellite was the most popular article of February, up six places from seventh in December.STS-133 was the highest climber in the top 10, up 78 places from 88^th. January's most popular article,Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, dropped seven places to eighth.Moon landing remains ahead ofmoon landing conspiracy theories for the second month in a row.

Of the top ten, two articles are featured content, two are listed as Good Articles, and the remaining six are assessed as C-class.

№	Article	Movement
1	Satellite	↑6(7)
2	Space Shuttle	↑11(13)
3	NASA	↑7(10)
4	Neil Armstrong	↓1(4)
5	Apollo 13	↑4(9)
6	Global Positioning System	↓1(5)
7	International Space Station	↑5(12)
8	Space Shuttle Challenger disaster	↓7(1)
9	Apollo 11	↓3(6)
10	STS-133	↑78(88)

For the full list of the top 1,500 popular pages within the project, seeWikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Popular pages (or thearchived record for February).

The article is currently assessed as start-class, and is missing a lot of information. It also lacks some basic features such as inline citations. Since Europa was a fairly major programme, enough information should be available to produce a much higher quality article, and it could probably be brought up to GA status with enough effort.