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March 18 in spaceflight

21 orbital launches flew on March 18, the earliest of them in 1961, and 19 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 7 spaceflight and astronomy events on March 18. Below are the pictures NASA published on March 18 in 5 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.

DATE

Launches

ON RECORD

21MISSIONS

19 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1961, the most recent 2025.

Recorded events

IN THE RECORD

7ENTRIES

Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 363 onward.

Pictures from this date

PUBLISHED

5IMAGES

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for March 18, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.

Published on March 18

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

NASA Science

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

NASA Science

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

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

NASA Science

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

NASA Science

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.

© Kerry-Ann Lecky Hepburn — used with the credit NASA publishes

What happened on March 18

  2. 1848

    Revolutions of 1848: A rebellion arises in Milan which in five days of street fighting drove Marshal Radetzky and his Austrian soldiers from the city.

    Revolutions of 1848 ↗

  3. 1899

    Phoebe, a satellite of Saturn, becomes the first to be discovered with photographs, taken in August 1898, by William Henry Pickering.

    Phoebe (moon) ↗

  4. 1906

    Romanian inventor Traian Vuia became the first person to fly a heavier-than-air monoplane (pictured) with an unassisted takeoff.

    Traian Vuia ↗

  5. 1965

    Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov ventured outside the Soviet spacecraft Voskhod 2, becoming the first person to walk in space.

    Alexei Leonov ↗

  6. 1965

    Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space.

    Astronaut ↗

  7. 1980

    A Vostok-2M rocket at Plesetsk Cosmodrome Site 43 explodes during a fueling operation, killing 48 people.

    Vostok-2M ↗

Every launch on March 18

21 launches

ONLINE
  1. 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 12-25SpXSUCCESS
  2. 2025Electron | High Five (Kinéis 21-25)RLSUCCESS
  3. 2022Soyuz 2.1a | Soyuz MS-21RFSASUCCESS
  4. 2020Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink 5SpXSUCCESS
  5. 2016Soyuz FG | Soyuz TMA-20MRFSASUCCESS
  6. 2015Proton-M Briz-M | Ekspress AM7KhSCSUCCESS
  7. 2001Zenit | XM-2SLSUCCESS
  8. 1995H-II | SFU & Himawari 5JAXASUCCESS
  9. 1987Zenit-2 | GVM Tselina-2CCCPSUCCESS
  10. 1981Proton-K/DM | Raduga 8CCCPSUCCESS
  11. 1976Soyuz U | Zenit-2M 65CCCPSUCCESS
  12. 1971Kosmos-3M | DS-P1-M 4CCCPSUCCESS
  13. 1970Kosmos 11K63 | DS-P1-I 8CCCPSUCCESS
  14. 1969Atlas F | OV1-17,18,19USAFSUCCESS
  15. 1966Atlas SLV-3 Agena D | KH-7 26USAFSUCCESS
  16. 1966Trailblazer 2 | Trailblazer PelletNASASUCCESS
  17. 1965Voskhod | Voskhod 2CCCPSUCCESS
  18. 1965Thor MG-18 | DSAP-1 F11USAFSUCCESS
  19. 1964Kosmos-2I 63S1 | DS-MG 1CCCPSUCCESS
  20. 1963Thor SLV-2A Agena D | KH-6 1USAFFAILURE
  21. 1961Little Joe | LJ-5ANASAPARTIAL

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.