Initially launched in late 2010/early 2011 for a run of four months, The Downlink was unpublished for more than nine years, after which a second volume was published from October 2020 to October 2021. This second volume was very different from the first volume, both in style and structure. A December issue was planned (for some reason, the second volume became volume 1 in April 2021), but was never finished. Like with volume 2, this volume 3 was intended to come with changes, though primarily to style.

Volume 3 will not feature any significant changes to style or structure. This both provides continuity with the previous volume and allows the contributors to construct each issue relatively easily. However, following volumes may see changes to style, format, and upload schedule. As it is still very early in the year, a discussion on this is not yet necessary, but suggestions of all kinds are always welcome at the talk page.

• Blue Ghost Mission 1 and Hakuto-R Mission 2 were launched from Kennedy Space Center on 15 January. They are planned to land in March and April, respectively.
• On 30 January, Sunita Williams broke Peggy Whitson's record for most time spent on spacewalks by a woman, at 62 hours and 6 minutes total.
• ISRO successfully docked two SpaDeX satellites on 16 January, making India the fourth country (including the EU) to dock two vehicles in space.
• Blue Origin's New Glenn launch vehicle completed its maiden flight on 16 January. The payload was successfully placed in orbit, while the first staged failed to land on the recovery ship.

• The image Jupiter clouds was promoted to Featured Media status on 4 January. It was nominated by MER-C.

Gene Cernan was the eleventh and (as of 2025) last person to ever step foot on the moon. In addition to being an astronaut, he was an aviator in the US Navy and engineer. Apollo 17 was his second Apollo mission, as he served as Apollo 10's lunar module pilot. He died in Houston on 16 January, 2017. He was the first astronaut to be buried at Texas State Cemetery.

New members:

• Joost van Assenbergh (9 January)
• TheCosmicNebula (25 January)

Launches
All times stated here are in UTC. For a complete list, see here: List_of_spaceflight_launches_in_January–June_2025#January.

1. New Glenn — DarkSky-1 (16 Jan. at 07:03) (success)
2. SpaceX Starship — 10 Starlink simulators (16 Jan. at 22:37) (launch failure)

Since December 2024, five new high-importance, eight new mid-importance, forty new low-importance, and 1,522 new NA-importance articles have been created. Fifteen unknown-importance articles have been removed, for a total of 1,560 more articles. One article has been promoted to Good Article status. There are also three more B-class articles, eleven more C-class articles, 23 more Start-class articles, four more Stub-class articles, 4 more lists, and 34 more files.

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Newsletter contributor: Ships&Space