2016 in spaceflight
Clockwise from top: The first successful landing of a Falcon 9 Full Thrust first stage on an ASDS, HiRISE views the crash site of Schiaparelli on Mars, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft about to be put into its Atlas V 411 payload faring, and JunoCam aboard Juno observes Jupiter during Perijove 3.
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| Orbital launches | |
|---|---|
| First | 15 January |
| Last | 28 December |
| Total | 85 |
| Successes | 82 |
| Failures | 2 |
| Partial failures | 1 |
| Catalogued | 83 |
| Rockets | |
| Maiden flights | |
| Retirements | Falcon 9 v1.1 |
| Manned flights | |
| Orbital | 5 |
| Total travellers | 14 |
| EVAs | 4 |
Several new rockets and spaceports began operations in 2016. First, Russia inaugurated the far-Eastern on 28 April 2016 with a traditional Soyuz-2.1a flight, before expanding it for the Angara rocket family in the following years. Then the Chinese Long March 7 took off for its maiden flight from the new Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island in the South China Sea on 25 June and the maiden flight of the Long March 5 took place on 3 November. Two years after its 2014 accident, the Antares rocket returned to flight on 17 October with its upgraded 230 version featuring the Russian RD-181 engine.
After many failed attempts, SpaceX started landing its Falcon 9 first stages on drone ships, edging closer to their long-stated goal of developing reusable launch vehicles. The company indicated that the recovered engines and structures did not suffer significant damage and they plan to launch a mission with a previously flown booster in January 2017.
The ExoMars mission, a collaboration between the European and Russian space agencies, was launched on 14 March and reached Mars on 19 October. Essentially dedicated to astrobiology investigations, this flight carries the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter which reached Mars orbit and Schiaparelli EDM lander which crashed upon landing. A subsequent flight scheduled for 2020 will carry the ExoMars rover along with four static surface instruments. Meanwhile, the Japanese space probe Akatsuki started its observations of Venus in May after spending five months gradually adjusting its orbit. Planetary exploration activities took center stage with the orbit insertion of NASA's Juno probe at Jupiter on 4 July, which was followed by the launch of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid 101955 Bennu on 8 September. Finally, on 30 September, the Rosetta probe executed a slow crash-landing on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
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