Several new rockets and spaceports began operations in 2016.

Overview

Russia inaugurated the far-Eastern

Vostochny Cosmodrome The Vostochny Cosmodrome (russian: Космодром Восточный, ''Kosmodrom Vostochny'', "Eastern Spaceport") is a Russian spaceport (still partly under construction) above the 51st parallel north in the Amur Oblast, in the Russian ...

on 28 April 2016 with a traditional Soyuz-2.1a flight, before expanding it for the

Angara The Angara ( Buryat and mn, Ангар, ''Angar'', "Cleft"; russian: Ангара́, ''Angará'') is a major river in Siberia, which traces a course through Russia's Irkutsk Oblast and Krasnoyarsk Krai. It drains out of Lake Baikal and is ...

rocket family in the following years. The Chinese

Long March 7 , stages = {{plainlist, * CZ-7: Two * CZ-7A: Three {{cite web, url=https://www.space.com/china-space-program-new-long-march-rockets.html, last=Jones, first=Andrew, title=China prepares to launch new rockets as part of push to boost spac ...

flew its

maiden flight The maiden flight, also known as first flight, of an aircraft is the first occasion on which it leaves the ground under its own power. The same term is also used for the first launch of rockets. The maiden flight of a new aircraft type is alwa ...

from the new

Wenchang Satellite Launch Center The Wenchang Space Launch Site ( zh, 文昌航天发射场, links=no), located in Wenchang, Hainan, China, is a rocket launch site — one of the two spacecraft launch sites of Xichang Satellite Launch Center (the other site is in Xichang, ...

Hainan Island Hainan (, ; ) is the smallest and southernmost province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), consisting of various islands in the South China Sea. , the largest and most populous island in China,The island of Taiwan, which is slight ...

on 25 June, and the maiden flight of the

Long March 5 Long March 5 (LM-5; zh, s=长征五号 , p=Chángzhēng wǔ hào), or Changzheng 5 (CZ-5), and also by its nickname "''Pang-Wu''" (胖五, "''Fat-Five''"), is a Chinese heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicl ...

took place on 3 November. Two years after its 2014 accident, the

Antares rocket Development The NASA COTS award was for and Orbital Sciences expected to invest an additional $150 million, split between $130 million for the booster and $20 million for the spacecraft. A Commercial Resupply Service contract of $1.9 bi ...

returned to flight on 17 October with its upgraded 230 version featuring the Russian RD-181 engine. After many failed attempts,

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...

began landing its

Falcon 9 Falcon 9 is a partially reusable medium lift launch vehicle that can carry cargo and crew into Earth orbit, produced by American aerospace company SpaceX. The rocket has two stages. The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and pa ...

first stages on

autonomous spaceport drone ship An autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) is an ocean-going vessel derived from a deck barge, outfitted with station-keeping engines and a large landing platform and is autonomously controlled when on station for a landing. Construction of ...

s, 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. One of the landed boosters, B1021, launched in April 2016, was flown again in March 2017; two others were converted to side boosters for the maiden flight of

Falcon Heavy Falcon Heavy is a partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle that is produced by SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer. The rocket consists of two strap-on boosters made from Falcon 9 first stages, a center core also made from a Falc ...

. The

ExoMars ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) is an astrobiology programme of the European Space Agency (ESA). The goals of ExoMars are to search for signs of past life on Mars, investigate how the Martian water and geochemical environment varies, investigate ...

mission, a collaboration between the European and Russian space agencies, was launched on 14 March and reached Mars on 19 October. Dedicated to

astrobiology Astrobiology, and the related field of exobiology, is an interdisciplinary scientific field that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. Astrobiology is the multidisciplinary field that investi ...

investigations, this flight carried the

ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO or ExoMars Orbiter) is a collaborative project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Roscosmos agency that sent an atmospheric research orbiter and the ''Schiaparelli'' demonstration lander ...

, which reached Mars orbit, and the

Schiaparelli EDM lander Schiaparelli may refer to: * Schiaparelli (surname), Italian surname * Schiaparelli (fashion house), founded by Elsa Schiaparelli and later revived Astronomy *Schiaparelli (lunar crater), a relatively small crater in the LQ10 (Seleucus) quadrangle ...

, which crashed upon landing. A subsequent flight scheduled for 2020 will carry the ExoMars

Rosalind Franklin rover ''Rosalind Franklin'', previously known as the ExoMars rover, is a planned robotic Mars rover, part of the international ExoMars programme led by the European Space Agency and the Russian Roscosmos State Corporation. The mission was schedule ...

along with four static surface instruments. Meanwhile, the Japanese space probe

Akatsuki may refer to: * Akatsuki (spacecraft), an uncrewed Venus orbiter * , any of three classes of destroyers of the Imperial Japanese Navy * , any of three destroyers of the Imperial Japanese Navy * ''Akatsuki'' (train), operated between Kyoto and Na ...

started its observations of

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...

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 Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandt ...

on 4 July, followed by the launch of NASA's

OSIRIS-REx OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) is a NASA asteroid-study and sample-return mission. The mission's primary goal is to obtain a sample of at least from 101955 Bennu, a carbo ...

mission to asteroid

101955 Bennu 101955 Bennu (provisional designation ) is a carbonaceous asteroid in the Apollo group discovered by the LINEAR Project on 11 September 1999. It is a potentially hazardous object that is listed on the Sentry Risk Table and has the highest cumu ...

on 8 September. Finally, on 30 September, the

Rosetta Rosetta or Rashid (; ar, رشيد ' ; french: Rosette ; cop, ϯⲣⲁϣⲓⲧ ''ti-Rashit'', Ancient Greek: Βολβιτίνη ''Bolbitinē'') is a port city of the Nile Delta, east of Alexandria, in Egypt's Beheira governorate. The ...

probe executed a slow crash-landing on comet

67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (abbreviated as 67P or 67P/C–G) is a Jupiter-family comet, originally from the Kuiper belt, with a current orbital period of 6.45 years, a rotation period of approximately 12.4 hours and a maximum velocity of . Ch ...

. Human spaceflights included the return of Scott Kelly and

Mikhail Kornienko Mikhail Borisovich Kornienko (Михаил Борисович Корниенко; born 15 April 1960) is a Russian cosmonaut. Kornienko served as a flight engineer on the International Space Station during Expedition 23/ 24 and was selected alon ...

in March after a yearlong mission on the

ISS The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAX ...

, the longest-ever continuous stay by astronauts at the station. Kelly also set the record for the longest-duration stay of an American in orbit. Four ISS Expeditions numbered 47 to 50 were launched in 2016, the first one using the last Soyuz TMA-M spacecraft and the next three inaugurating the modernized

Soyuz MS The Soyuz MS (; GRAU: 11F732A48) is a revision of the Russian spacecraft series Soyuz first launched in 2016. It is an evolution of the Soyuz TMA-M spacecraft, with modernization mostly concentrated on the communications and navigation subsyste ...

. Expedition 50 will continue into 2017. Several EVAs were performed to maintain the exterior of the ISS. The experimental

BEAM Beam may refer to: Streams of particles or energy * Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy ** Laser beam * Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles **Charged particle beam, a spatially localized g ...

inflatable habitat was attached to the ISS on 16 April and expanded on 28 May to begin two years of on-orbit tests. Meanwhile, China launched its new

Tiangong-2 Tiangong-2 () was a Chinese space laboratory and part of the Project 921-2 space station program. Tiangong-2 was launched on 15 September 2016. It was deorbited as planned on 19 July 2019. Tiangong-2 was neither designed nor planned to be a ...

space laboratory in September, which was first visited by two astronauts for a month between 19 October and 17 November.

Orbital launches

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