Launches
ON RECORD18MISSIONS
16 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1966, the most recent 2026.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
1966 · 60 years ago today
Venera 3 reaches Venus
Venera 3 struck Venus and became the first human-made object to reach the surface of another planet, its transmitter already dead.
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ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
March 1 in spaceflight
18 orbital launches flew on March 1, the earliest of them in 1966, and 16 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 6 spaceflight and astronomy events on March 1. Below are the pictures NASA published on March 1 in 5 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD6ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1870 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED5IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for March 1, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on March 1
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2026
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
2025
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
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.
© John Sarkissian — used with the credit NASA publishes
2023
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
2021
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.
© U. Mishra — used with the credit NASA publishes
What happened on March 1
1870
Paraguayan War: Marshal Francisco Solano López died at the Battle of Cerro Corá.
Paraguayan War ↗1870
Marshal F. S. López dies during the Battle of Cerro Corá thus marking the end of the Paraguayan War.
Francisco Solano López ↗1954
Nuclear weapons testing: The Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb, is detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States.
Nuclear weapons testing ↗1966
Venera 3 Soviet space probe crashes on Venus becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.
Venera 3 ↗2002
The Envisat environmental satellite successfully launches aboard an Ariane 5 rocket to reach an orbit of 800 km (500 mi) above the Earth, which was the then-largest payload at 10.5 m long and with a diameter of 4.57 m.
Envisat ↗2002
Space Shuttle Columbia is launched on STS-109 to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
Space Shuttle Columbia ↗
Every launch on March 1
18 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-23SpXSUCCESS
- 2025Kuaizhou 1A | Unknown PayloadEPFAILURE
- 2022Atlas V 541 | GOES-TULASUCCESS
- 2018Atlas V 541 | GOES-SULASUCCESS
- 2017Atlas V 401 | NROL-79ULASUCCESS
- 2013Falcon 9 v1.0 | SpX CRS-2SpXSUCCESS
- 2010Proton-M/DM-2 Enhanced | 3 x Glonass-M (Kosmos 2459, Kosmos 2460, Kosmos 2461)KhSCSUCCESS
- 2005Zenit | XM-3SLSUCCESS
- 2002Space Shuttle Columbia / OV-102 | STS-109USASUCCESS
- 2002Ariane 5 G | EnvisatASASUCCESS
- 1997Ariane 44P | INTELSAT 801ASASUCCESS
- 1985Soyuz U | Zenit-8 12CCCPSUCCESS
- 1984Delta 3920 | Landsat 5USAFSUCCESS
- 1979Vostok 8A92M | Meteor-2 4CCCPSUCCESS
- 1973Voskhod | Zenit-4MK 10CCCPSUCCESS
- 1972Vostok 8A92M | Tselina-D 3CCCPSUCCESS
- 1972Titan IIIC | DSP 3USAFSUCCESS
- 1966Molniya-M | Luna-10aCCCPFAILURE
FIELD KIT / LIBRARY
SPONSORED
General-audience astronomy and spaceflight — none of it a textbook.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.