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January 1 in spaceflight

2 orbital launches flew on January 1, the earliest of them in 1990, and 2 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 4 spaceflight and astronomy events on January 1. Below are the pictures NASA published on January 1 in 1 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.

DATE

Launches

ON RECORD

2MISSIONS

2 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1990, the most recent 2024.

Recorded events

IN THE RECORD

4ENTRIES

Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1801 onward.

Pictures from this date

PUBLISHED

1IMAGE

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for January 1, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.

Published on January 1

NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.

NASA Science

2024

NASA Science

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

NASA · public domain

What happened on January 1

  1. 1801

    Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the dwarf planet Ceres, naming it after the Roman goddess of agriculture and of motherly love.

    Giuseppe Piazzi ↗

  2. 1801

    Ceres, the largest and first known object in the Asteroid belt, is discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi.

    Ceres (dwarf planet) ↗

  3. 1818

    Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (anonymously) publishes the pioneering work of science fiction, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, in London.

    Mary Shelley ↗

  4. 2019

    The NASA space probe New Horizons flew by the trans-Neptunian object Arrokoth, making it the farthest object visited by a spacecraft.

    NASA ↗

Every launch on January 1

2 launches

ONLINE
  1. 2024PSLV-DL | XPoSatISROSUCCESS
  2. 1990Commercial Titan III | Skynet 4A & JCSat 2MMSUCCESS

FIELD KIT / LIBRARY

SPONSORED

General-audience astronomy and spaceflight — none of it a textbook.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Links here cost you nothing extra.

  • LISTING

    Cosmos — Carl Sagan

    Still the best single argument for why any of this matters, and it leaves the arithmetic in. For a reader who wants the science, not just the awe.

    VIEW

  • LISTING

    Pale Blue Dot — Carl Sagan

    The case for leaving Earth, written by someone unsentimental about how hard that is. Suits readers who want the argument rather than the poster.

    VIEW

  • LISTING

    Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir

    Hard-SF problem solving in The Martian's key — for anyone who liked the engineering more than the peril. The only novel on this list.

    VIEW

BROWSE opens an Amazon search, not a specific recommendation.

LINKS AMAZON.COM

Sources and licences

Event text and thumbnails come from Wikipedia and are used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Images are drawn only from Wikimedia Commons, which does not accept non-free content — each thumbnail links to its file page, where its licence and author are recorded.

Launch records are from The Space Devs’ Launch Library 2. Pictures are NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day; NASA imagery is generally not subject to copyright, but individual APOD entries are frequently the property of the photographer, and each caption says which applies.