Launches
ON RECORD19MISSIONS
15 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1964, the most recent 2026.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
March 27 in spaceflight
19 orbital launches flew on March 27, the earliest of them in 1964, and 15 reached orbit. Below are the pictures NASA published on March 27 in 6 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
NONE FOUND0ENTRIES
Wikipedia records no spaceflight or astronomy event on this date.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED6IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for March 27, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on March 27
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2026
Hickson 44 in Leo
Scanning the skies for galaxies, Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson and colleagues identified some 100 compact groups of galaxies, now appropriately called Hickson Compact Groups. The four prominent galaxies seen in this intriguing telescopic skyscape are one such group, Hickson 44. The Hickson 44 galaxy group is about 100 million light-years distant, far beyond the foreground Milky Way stars, toward the northern springtime constellation Leo. The two spiral galaxies in the center of the image are edge-on NGC 3190 with distinctive, warped dust lanes, and S-shaped NGC 3187. Along with the bright elliptical, NGC 3193 (left) they are also known as Arp 316. The spiral toward the lower right corner is NGC 3185, the 4th member of the Hickson group. Like other galaxies in Hickson groups, these show signs of distortion and enhanced star formation, evidence of a gravitational tug of war that will eventually result in galaxy mergers on a cosmic timescale. The merger process is now understood to be a normal part of the evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky Way. For scale, NGC 3190 is about 75,000 light-years across at the estimated distance of Hickson 44.
© Peter Kennett — used with the credit NASA publishes
2025
Messier 81
One of the brightest galaxies in planet Earth's sky is similar in size to our Milky Way Galaxy: big, beautiful Messier 81. Also known as NGC 3031 or Bode's galaxy for its 18th century discoverer, this grand spiral can be found toward the northern constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear. The sharp, detailed telescopic view reveals M81's bright yellow nucleus, blue spiral arms, pinkish starforming regions, and sweeping cosmic dust lanes. But some dust lanes actually cut across the galactic disk (left of center), contrary to other prominent spiral features. The errant dust lanes may be the lingering result of a close encounter between M81 and the nearby galaxy M82 lurking outside of this frame. Scrutiny of variable stars in M81 has yielded a well-determined distance for an external galaxy -- 11.8 million light-years.
© Lorand Fenyes — used with the credit NASA publishes
2024
The Coma Cluster of Galaxies
Almost every object in the featured photograph is a galaxy. The Coma Cluster of Galaxies pictured here is one of the densest clusters known - it contains thousands of galaxies. Each of these galaxies houses billions of stars - just as our own Milky Way Galaxy does. Although nearby when compared to most other clusters, light from the Coma Cluster still takes hundreds of millions of years to reach us. In fact, the Coma Cluster is so big it takes light millions of years just to go from one side to the other. Most galaxies in Coma and other clusters are ellipticals, while most galaxies outside of clusters are spirals. The nature of Coma's X-ray emission is still being investigated.
© Joe Hua — used with the credit NASA publishes
2023
Aurora Over Arctic Henge
Reports of powerful solar flares started a seven-hour quest north to capture modern monuments against an aurora-filled sky. The peaks of iconic Arctic Henge in Raufarhöfn in northern Iceland were already aligned with the stars: some are lined up toward the exact north from one side and toward exact south from the other. The featured image, taken after sunset late last month, looks directly south, but since the composite image covers so much of the sky, the north star Polaris is actually visible at the very top of the frame. Also visible are familiar constellations including the Great Bear (Ursa Major) on the left, and the Hunter (Orion) on the lower right. The quest was successful. The sky lit up dramatically with bright and memorable auroras that shimmered with amazing colors including red, pink, yellow, and green -- sometimes several at once.
© Cari Letelier — used with the credit NASA publishes
2022
Titan Seas Reflect Sunlight
Why would the surface of Titan light up with a blinding flash? The reason: a sunglint from liquid seas. Saturn's moon Titan has numerous smooth lakes of methane that, when the angle is right, reflect sunlight as if they were mirrors. Pictured here in false-color, the robotic Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017 imaged the cloud-covered Titan in 2014 in different bands of cloud-piercing infrared light. This specular reflection was so bright it saturated one of Cassini's infrared cameras. Although the sunglint was annoying -- it was also useful. The reflecting regions confirm that northern Titan houses a wide and complex array of seas with a geometry that indicates periods of significant evaporation. During its numerous passes of our Solar System's most mysterious moon, Cassini has revealed Titan to be a world with active weather -- including times when it rains a liquefied version of natural gas.
NASA · public domain
2021
Exploring the Antennae
Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly constellation Corvus, two large galaxies are colliding. Stars in the two galaxies, cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, very rarely collide in the course of the ponderous cataclysm that lasts for hundreds of millions of years. But the galaxies' large clouds of molecular gas and dust often do, triggering furious episodes of star formationi near the center of the cosmic wreckage. Spanning over 500 thousand light-years, this stunning view also reveals new star clusters and matter flung far from the scene of the accident by gravitational tidal forces. The remarkably sharp ground-based image includes narrowband data that highlights the characteristic red glow of atomic hydrogen gas in star-forming regions. The suggestive overall visual appearance of the extended arcing structures gives the galaxy pair its popular name - The Antennae.
© Bernard Miller — used with the credit NASA publishes
Every launch on March 27
19 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Long March 2C/YZ-1S | Shiyan 33CASCSUCCESS
- 2019OS-M1 | Lingque-1BOSFAILURE
- 2015Soyuz STB/Fregat | Galileo L4 (FOC FM03-FM04)ASASUCCESS
- 2015Soyuz FG | Soyuz TMA-16MRFSASUCCESS
- 2008Kosmos-3M | SAR-Lupe 4NPSUCCESS
- 2004Proton | Raduga-1 7KhSCSUCCESS
- 1990Molniya-M | US-K 62CCCPSUCCESS
- 1980Soyuz U | Progress 8CCCPSUCCESS
- 1980Kosmos-3M | Taifun-1 11CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Kosmos-3M | DS-U2-IK 6CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Voskhod | Zenit-4MK 39CCCPSUCCESS
- 1972Molniya-M | Venera-8CCCPSUCCESS
- 1971Voskhod | Zenit-4M 13CCCPSUCCESS
- 1970Voskhod | Zenit-4MK 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1969Atlas SLV-3C Centaur | Mariner 7USAFSUCCESS
- 1969Proton | Mars-2bCCCPFAILURE
- 1966Molniya 8K78 | Molniya-1 3aCCCPFAILURE
- 1964Scout X-3 | Ariel 2SERCSUCCESS
- 1964Molniya 8K78 | Zond 1cCCCPFAILURE
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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