• The International Space Station's eight compartments were fully occupied for the first time on 1 December, with the rebirthing of Cygnus NG-23 to Unity.
• On 3 December, China's Zhuque-3 made the first non-American attempt at landing a booster. The booster failed to land following a landing-burn anomaly. A second attempt on the 23rd, this time using the new Long March 2A launch vehicle, also failed.
• On 6 December, contact with NASA's MAVEN Mars orbiter was lost. The last received telemetry was from the 4th, with the fragmented transmission of the 6th suggesting that the craft was rotating in an unintended way, and possibly having changed orbit. As of 16 January 2026, the mission has not yet been officially ended, although reestablishing communications with MAVEN is considered highly improbable.

• The article "Gordon Cooper" was promoted to Featured Article status on 9 December. It was nominated by Hawkeye7.

STS-116 was the 33rd mission of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Launched in the late evening of 6 December, the main aims of the mission were the installation of one of the International Space Station's Integrated Truss Structure segments, rewiring of the power system, and personnel exchange. Also known as ISS-12A.1, STS-116 was the first mission to include a Swedish astronaut, Christer Fuglesang. It returned to Earth in the evening of 22 December.

This image, of the first of three EVA sessions, was taken on the fourth day of the mission. Flight engineer Robert Curbeam is on the left, opposite mission specialist 3 Christer Fuglesang. The image was taken over New Zealand; the South Island is visible on the left, while the southern portion of the North Island, mostly consisting of the Wairarapa region, is visible in the top-right.

New Members: none

December Launches
All times stated here are in UTC. See the complete list here.

1. Zhuque-3 — no payload (3 Dec. at 04:00) (success)
2. HANBIT-NANO — various (22 Dec. at 12:45) (launch failure)
3. Long March 12A — mass simulator (23 Dec. at 02:00:00) (success)
4. LVM3 — BlueBird-6 (24 Dec. at 03:25:30) (success)
5. Soyuz-2.1b (1st stage), Fregat-M (2nd stage) — various (28 Dec. at 13:18:05) (success)

Since November 2025, there are one more mid-importance, 29 more low-importance, two more NA-importance, and 20 more unknown-importance class articles, for a total of 52 more articles. There are also one more FA-class articles, one less GA-class articles, ten more C-class articles, 20 more Start-class articles, eleven more Stub-class articles, and four more lists.

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Newsletter contributors: Ships&Space