Launches
ON RECORD17MISSIONS
16 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1960, the most recent 2026.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
April 16 in spaceflight
17 orbital launches flew on April 16, the earliest of them in 1960, and 16 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 3 spaceflight and astronomy events on April 16. Below are the pictures NASA published on April 16 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 1912 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED6IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for April 16, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on April 16
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2026
South Celestial Tree
If you live in the northern hemisphere, you may have learned how to locate the North Star, Polaris, in the night sky. It can be used to find north, and it approximately marks the northern celestial pole. If you live in the southern hemisphere, there is no bright star marking the southern celestial pole, but the Southern Cross can be used to find south. The featured image was taken in Padre Bernardo (GO), Brazil. It shows the apparent motion of the stars around the apparently empty southern celestial pole over 2 hours, on August 20, 2018. Each star takes about 24 hours to make a complete turn around the pole in the sky. Padre Bernardo is located in the Cerrado region, a tropical savanna that occupies most of central Brazil and supports rich biodiversity. The barren branch that apparently supports this sky wheel of rotating stars is a common sight there in the dry season during the southern winter.
© Kiko Fairbairn — used with the credit NASA publishes
2025
Halo of the Cat's Eye
What created the unusual halo around the Cat's Eye Nebula? No one is sure. What is sure is that the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae on the sky. Although haunting symmetries are seen in the bright central region, this image was taken to feature its intricately structured outer halo, which spans over three light-years across. Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a Sun-like star. Only recently however, have some planetaries been found to have expansive halos, likely formed from material shrugged off during earlier puzzling episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of the Cat's Eye Nebula's halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years.
© Taavi Niittee (Tõrva Astronomy Club) — used with the credit NASA publishes
2024
Filaments of the Vela Supernova Remnant
The explosion is over, but the consequences continue. About eleven thousand years ago, a star in the constellation of Vela could be seen to explode, creating a strange point of light briefly visible to humans living near the beginning of recorded history. The outer layers of the star crashed into the interstellar medium, driving a shock wave that is still visible today. The featured image captures some of that filamentary and gigantic shock in visible light. As gas flies away from the detonated star, it decays and reacts with the interstellar medium, producing light in many different colors and energy bands. Remaining at the center of the Vela Supernova Remnant is a pulsar, a star as dense as nuclear matter that spins around more than ten times in a single second. Monday's Eclipse Imagery: Notable Submissions to APOD
NASA · public domain
2023
M2-9: Wings of a Butterfly Nebula
Are stars better appreciated for their art after they die? Actually, stars usually create their most artistic displays as they die. In the case of low-mass stars like our Sun and M2-9 pictured here, the stars transform themselves from normal stars to white dwarfs by casting off their outer gaseous envelopes. The expended gas frequently forms an impressive display called a planetary nebula that fades gradually over thousands of years. M2-9, a butterfly planetary nebula 2100 light-years away shown in representative colors, has wings that tell a strange but incomplete tale. In the center, two stars orbit inside a gaseous disk 10 times the orbit of Pluto. The expelled envelope of the dying star breaks out from the disk creating the bipolar appearance. Much remains unknown about the physical processes that cause and shape planetary nebulae.
NASA · public domain
2022
Orion Pines
Taken with a camera fixed to a tripod, many short exposures were aligned with the stars to unveil this beautiful, dark night sky. Captured near the rural village of Albany`a at the northeastern corner of Spain, the three stars of Orion's belt stretch across top center in the starry frame. Alnitak, the easternmost (left) of the belt stars is seen next to the more diffuse glow of the Flame Nebula and the dark notch of the famous Horsehead. Easily visible to the naked-eye The Great Nebula of Orion is below the belt stars. A mere 1,500 light-years distant, it is the closest large stellar nursery to our fair planet. Best seen in photographs, the broad and faint arc of Barnard's Loop seems to embrace Orion's brighter stars and nebulae though. In the northern spring the familiar northern winter constellation is setting. Near the western horizon toward lower right Orion's apparently bright blue supergiant Rigel just touches the branches of a pine tree.
© Juan Carlos Casado — used with the credit NASA publishes
2021
The Doubly Warped World of Binary Black Holes
Light rays from accretion disks around a pair of orbiting supermassive black holes make their way through the warped space-time produced by extreme gravity in this stunning computer visualization. The simulated accretion disks have been given different false color schemes, red for the disk surrounding a 200-million-solar-mass black hole, and blue for the disk surrounding a 100-million-solar-mass black hole. That makes it easier to track the light sources, but the choice also reflects reality. Hotter gas gives off light closer to the blue end of the spectrum and material orbiting smaller black holes experiences stronger gravitational effects that produce higher temperatures. For these masses, both accretion disks would actually emit most of their light in the ultraviolet though. In the video, distorted secondary images of the blue black hole, which show the red black hole's view of its partner, can be found within the tangled skein of the red disk warped by the gravity of the blue black hole in the foreground. Because we're seeing red's view of blue while also seeing blue directly, the images allow us to see both sides of blue at the same time. Red and blue light originating from both black holes can be seen in the innermost ring of light, called the photon ring, near their event horizons. Astronomers expect that in the not-too-distant future they’ll be able to detect gravitational waves, ripples in space-time, produced when two supermassive black holes in a system much like the one simulated here spiral together and merge.
NASA · public domain
What happened on April 16
1912
American pilot Harriet Quimby (pictured) became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
Harriet Quimby ↗1912
Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel.
Harriet Quimby ↗
Every launch on April 16
17 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Soyuz 2.1b/Volga | Kosmos 2609-2614VKSSUCCESS
- 2025Minotaur IV | NROL-174NGSSSUCCESS
- 2023Long March 4B | Fengyun-3GCASCSUCCESS
- 2014Soyuz-U | EgyptSat 2 / ايجيبت ساتRFSASUCCESS
- 2010Soyuz-U | Kobalt-M (Kosmos 2462)VKSSUCCESS
- 2008Pegasus XL | Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS)OSCSUCCESS
- 2004Atlas IIAS | Superbird A2LMTSUCCESS
- 2002Ariane 44L | NSS 7ASASUCCESS
- 1997Ariane 44LP | Thaicom 3 & BSat 1aASASUCCESS
- 1993Tsiklon-3 | Tselina-R 4VKSSUCCESS
- 1991Kosmos-3M | Parus 72CCCPSUCCESS
- 1987Soyuz U | Yantar-4KS1 7CCCPSUCCESS
- 1985Soyuz U | Foton 1CCCPSUCCESS
- 1981Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 37CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Soyuz U | Zenit-4MK 40CCCPSUCCESS
- 1972Saturn V | Apollo 16NASASUCCESS
- 1960Vostok-L 8K72 | Luna-4bCCCPFAILURE
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.
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.
- VIEW
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.
BROWSE opens an Amazon search, not a specific recommendation.
LINKS AMAZON.COM