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March 25 in spaceflight
Wikipedia records 3 spaceflight and astronomy events on March 25. Below are the pictures NASA published on March 25 in 6 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD3ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1655 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED6IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for March 25, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on March 25
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2026
The Guardians of Rapa Nui beneath the Milky Way
In the words of today's astrophotographer, Rositsa Dimitrova, "What have these silent sentinels watched pass across the sky?" The volcanic mo'ai (meaning statue) of Anakena stand guard over Rapa Nui (Isla de Pascua, Easter Island), a Polynesian island (annexed by Chile in 1888) located thousands of kilometers off the coast of South America in the Pacific Ocean. Due to the island's remoteness, the mo'ai, with their backs to the dark ocean, are able to gaze upon a clear and vibrant night sky. Pictured, these larger-than-life statues stare at the bright band of the Milky Way, partly obscured by interstellar dust and blurred by Earth's clouds. Under such clear night skies, the Rapa Nui created observatories and used astronomical observations for navigation, calendar calibration, celebrations, and more. Images like this one remind us of the importance of dark skies, protecting the land underneath them, and preserving the culture that they inspire.
© Rositsa Dimitrova Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II) — used with the credit NASA publishes
2025
A Blue Banded Blood Moon
What causes a blue band to cross the Moon during a lunar eclipse? The blue band is real but usually quite hard to see. The featured HDR image of last week's lunar eclipse, however -- taken from Norman, Oklahoma (USA) -- has been digitally processed to exaggerate the colors. The gray color on the upper right of the top lunar image is the Moon's natural color, directly illuminated by sunlight. The lower parts of the Moon on all three images are not directly lit by the Sun since it is being eclipsed -- it is in the Earth's shadow. It is faintly lit, though, by sunlight that has passed deep through Earth's atmosphere. This part of the Moon is red -- and called a blood Moon -- for the same reason that Earth's sunsets are red: because air scatters away more blue light than red. The unusual purple-blue band visible on the upper right of the top and middle images is different -- its color is augmented by sunlight that has passed high through Earth's atmosphere, where red light is better absorbed by ozone than blue. Celestial Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)
© Zixiong Jin — used with the credit NASA publishes
2024
Sonified: The Jellyfish Nebula Supernova Remnant
What does a supernova remnant sound like? Although sound is a compression wave in matter and does not carry into empty space, interpretive sound can help listeners appreciate and understand a visual image of a supernova remnant in a new way. Recently, the Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443) has been sonified quite creatively. In the featured sound-enhanced video, when an imaginary line passes over a star, the sound of a drop falling into water is played, a sound particularly relevant to the nebula's aquatic namesake. Additionally, when the descending line crosses gas that glows red, a low tone is played, while green sounds a middle tone, and blue produces a tone with a relatively high pitch. Light from the supernova that created the Jellyfish Nebula left approximately 35,000 years ago, when humanity was in the stone age. The nebula will slowly disperse over the next million years, although the explosion also created a dense neutron star which will remain indefinitely.
NASA · public domain
2023
Venus and the Da Vinci Glow
On March 23 early evening skygazers could watch Venus and a young crescent moon, both near the western horizon. On that date Earth's brilliant evening star, faint lunar night side and slender sunlit crescent were captured in this telephoto skyscape posing alongside a church tower from San Pietro di Cadore, Dolomiti, Italy. Of course the subtle lunar illumination is earthshine, earthlight reflected from the Moon's night side. A description of earthshine, in terms of sunlight reflected by Earth's oceans illuminating the Moon's dark surface, was written over 500 years ago by Leonardo da Vinci. On March 24, from some locations the Moon could be seen to occult or pass in front of Venus. Around the planet tonight, a waxing lunar crescent will appear near the Pleiades star cluster.
© Giorgia Hofer — used with the credit NASA publishes
2022
The Medusa Nebula
Braided and serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Like its mythological namesake, the nebula is associated with a dramatic transformation. The planetary nebula phase represents a final stage in the evolution of low mass stars like the sun as they transform themselves from red giants to hot white dwarf stars and in the process shrug off their outer layers. Ultraviolet radiation from the hot star powers the nebular glow. The Medusa's transforming star is the faint one near the center of the overall bright crescent shape. In this deep telescopic view, fainter filaments clearly extend above and left of the bright crescent region. The Medusa Nebula is estimated to be over 4 light-years across.
© Damien Cannane — used with the credit NASA publishes
2021
Curiosity: Sol 3048
Before Perseverance there was Curiosity. In fact, the Curiosity rover accomplished the first sky crane maneuver touchdown on Mars on August 5, 2012. March 2, 2021 marked Curiosity's 3,048th martian day operating on the surface of the Red Planet. This 360 degree panorama from sol 3048 is a mosaic of 149 frames from Curiosity's Mastcam above the rover's deck. It includes 23 frames of icy, thin, high clouds drifting through the martian sky. The cloudy sky frames were recorded throughout that martian day and are digitally stitched together in the panoramic view. Near center is a layered and streaked Mont Mercou. The peak of central Mount Sharp, rising over 5 kilometers above the floor of Gale Crater, is in the distant background on the left.
NASA · public domain
What happened on March 25
1655
Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan, the largest natural satellite of Saturn.
Christiaan Huygens ↗
1979
The first fully functional Space Shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch.
Space Shuttle ↗
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. This archive is still being mirrored, so some days are incomplete. 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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General-audience astronomy and spaceflight — none of it a textbook.
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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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