 | 28 April 2010: The Slovak Republic signed a Cooperation Agreement with ESA. This agreement will allow the Slovak Republic and ESA to create the framework for a more consolidated relationship in the future.
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| 28 April 2010: ESA Envisat images captured oil that is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico after a drilling rig exploded and sank off the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi, USA, on 22 April. |
 | 28 April 2016: Roscosmos launched a Soyuz-2.1a rocket, carrying three satellites. The first Vostochny
launch, initially set for April 27, was postponed due to construction delays. Vostochny has
been under construction since 2012 and is expected to reduce Russia’s dependency on the
Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. |
 | 28 April 2016: ISRO’s PSLV-C33, carrying India’s seventh navigation satellite IRNSS-1G, blasted off from
the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. The satellite was successfully placed in sub-
Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. |
 | 28 April 2012: Richard Branson’s Abu Dhabi-backed Virgin Galactic has appointed a senior executive to manage the establishment of a spaceport in the UAE capital, with the long-term aim of reducing the flight journey to the US to one hour. |
 | 28 April 2012: Three members of the Expedition 30 crew undocked from the International Space Station and safely returned to Earth on Friday, wrapping up a five-and-a-half-month mission in space. Commander Dan Burbank of NASA and Russian Flight Engineers Anatoly Ivanishin and Anton Shkaplerov landed their Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft in Kazakhstan at 6:45 a.m. CDT after undocking from the space station’s Poisk module at 3:18 a.m. The trio, which arrived at the station on Nov. 16, 2011, spent a total of 165 days in space, 163 of them conducting research on the station. |
 | 28 April 2020: Mars sample return is a long-standing goal of many planetary scientists, but difficult and
expensive to achieve. Jeff Foust reports on how NASA and ESA are firming up plans to do
so over the next decade, despite many uncertainties. |
| 28 April 2021: NASA’s selection of SpaceX’s Starship for the Human Landing System is designed to allow
astronauts to return to the Moon. Casey Dreier and Jason Davis describe how it also
paves the way for human missions to Mars by both organizations. |
