Launches
ON RECORD15MISSIONS
14 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1967, the most recent 2026.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
January 14 in spaceflight
15 orbital launches flew on January 14, the earliest of them in 1967, and 14 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 2 spaceflight and astronomy events on January 14. Below are the pictures NASA published on January 14 in 6 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD2ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1973 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED6IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for January 14, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on January 14
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2026
M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy
The Whirlpool Galaxy is a classic spiral galaxy. At only 30 million light years distant and fully 60 thousand light years across, M51, also known as NGC 5194, is one of the brightest and most picturesque galaxies on the sky. The featured deep image is a digital combination of images taken in different colors over 58 hours with a telescope from Lijiang, China. Anyone with a good pair of binoculars, however, can see this Whirlpool toward the constellation of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici). M51 is a spiral galaxy of type Sc and is the dominant member of a whole group of galaxies. Astronomers speculate that M51's spiral structure is primarily due to its gravitational interaction with the smaller galaxy just above it.
© Michael Sleeman — used with the credit NASA publishes
2025
North Star: Polaris and Surrounding Dust
Why is Polaris called the North Star? First, Polaris is the nearest bright star toward the north spin axis of the Earth. Therefore, as the Earth turns, stars appear to revolve around Polaris, but Polaris itself always stays in the same northerly direction -- making it the North Star. Since no bright star is near the south spin axis of the Earth, there is currently no bright South Star. Thousands of years ago, Earth's spin axis pointed in a slightly different direction so that Vega was the North Star. Although Polaris is not the brightest star on the sky, it is easily located because it is nearly aligned with two stars in the cup of the Big Dipper. Polaris is near the center of the five-degree wide featured image, a digital composite of hundreds of exposures that brings out faint gas and dust of the Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN) all over the frame. The surface of Cepheid Polaris slowly pulsates, causing the famous star to change its brightness by a few percent over the course of a few days. Today: Zoom APOD Lecture hosted by the Amateur Astronomers of Association of New York
© Davide Coverta — used with the credit NASA publishes
2024
Dragon Aurora over Iceland
Have you ever seen a dragon in the sky? Although real flying dragons don't exist, a huge dragon-shaped aurora developed in the sky over Iceland in 2019. The aurora was caused by a hole in the Sun's corona that expelled charged particles into a solar wind that followed a changing interplanetary magnetic field to Earth's magnetosphere. As some of those particles then struck Earth's atmosphere, they excited atoms which subsequently emitted light: aurora. This iconic display was so enthralling that the photographer's mother ran out to see it and was captured in the foreground. Our active Sun continues to show an unusually high number of prominences, filaments, sunspots, and large active regions as solar maximum approaches in 2025.
© Jingyi Zhang & Wang Zheng — used with the credit NASA publishes
2023
Perihelion Sun 2023
Perihelion for 2023, Earth's closest approach to the Sun, was on January 4 at 16:17 UTC. That was less than 24 hours after this sharp image of the Sun's disk was recorded with telescope and H-alpha filter from Sydney, Australia, planet Earth. An H-alpha filter transmits a characteristic red light from hydrogen atoms. In views of the Sun it emphasizes the Sun's chromosphere, a region just above the solar photosphere or normally visible solar surface. In this H-alpha image of the increasingly active Sun planet-sized sunspot regions are dominated by bright splotches called plages. Dark filaments of plasma snaking across the solar disk transition to bright prominences when seen above the solar limb.
© Barden Ridge Observatory — used with the credit NASA publishes
2022
NGC 1566: The Spanish Dancer Spiral Galaxy
An island universe of billions of stars, NGC 1566 lies about 60 million light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado. Popularly known as the Spanish Dancer galaxy, it's seen face-on from our Milky Way perspective. A gorgeous grand design spiral, this galaxy's two graceful spiral arms span over 100,000 light-years, traced by bright blue star clusters, pinkish starforming regions, and swirling cosmic dust lanes. NGC 1566's flaring center makes the spiral one of the closest and brightest Seyfert galaxies. It likely houses a central supermassive black hole wreaking havoc on surrounding stars, gas, and dust. In this sharp southern galaxy portrait, the spiky stars lie well within the Milky Way.
© Mark Hanson — used with the credit NASA publishes
2021
Aurora Slathers Up the Sky
Like salsa verde on your favorite burrito, a green aurora slathers up the sky in this 2017 June 25 snapshot from the International Space Station. About 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earth, the orbiting station is itself within the upper realm of the auroral displays. Aurorae have the signature colors of excited molecules and atoms at the low densities found at extreme altitudes. Emission from atomic oxygen dominates this view. The tantalizing glow is green at lower altitudes, but rarer reddish bands extend above the space station's horizon. The orbital scene was captured while passing over a point south and east of Australia, with stars above the horizon at the right belonging to the constellation Canis Major, Orion's big dog. Sirius, alpha star of Canis Major, is the brightest star near the Earth's limb.
NASA · public domain
What happened on January 14
1973
Elvis Presley's (pictured) concert Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite was broadcast live to audiences in Asia and Oceania.
Elvis Presley ↗1973
Elvis Presley's concert Aloha from Hawaii is broadcast live via satellite, and sets the record as the most watched broadcast by an individual entertainer in television history.
Elvis Presley ↗
Every launch on January 14
15 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-98SpXSUCCESS
- 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Transporter 12 (Dedicated SSO Rideshare)SpXSUCCESS
- 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 7-10SpXSUCCESS
- 2021New Shepard | NS-14BOSUCCESS
- 2017SS-520-4 | TRICOM-1JAXAFAILURE
- 2017Falcon 9 Full Thrust | Iridium-1SpXSUCCESS
- 1996Delta II | Mugunghwa 2USAFSUCCESS
- 1991Soyuz-U2 | Progress M-6CCCPSUCCESS
- 1987Tsiklon-3 | Tselina-D 58CCCPSUCCESS
- 1982Kosmos-3M | Parus 30CCCPSUCCESS
- 1980Kosmos-3M | Parus 22CCCPSUCCESS
- 1971Kosmos 11K63 | DS-P1-I 10CCCPSUCCESS
- 1970Titan 23B | KH-8 25USAFSUCCESS
- 1969Soyuz | Soyuz 4CCCPSUCCESS
- 1967Thor SLV-2A Agena D | KH-4A 38USAFSUCCESS
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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