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April 19 in spaceflight

18 orbital launches flew on April 19, the earliest of them in 1966, and 17 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 8 spaceflight and astronomy events on April 19. Below are the pictures NASA published on April 19 in 6 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.

Launches

ON RECORD

18MISSIONS

17 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1966, the most recent 2026.

Recorded events

IN THE RECORD

8ENTRIES

Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1809 onward.

Pictures from this date

PUBLISHED

6IMAGES

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for April 19, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.

Published on April 19

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

Eye on the Milky Way

2026

Eye on the Milky Way

Have you ever had stars in your eyes? It appears that the eye on the left does, and moreover, it appears to be gazing at even more stars. The featured 27-frame mosaic was taken in 2019 from Ojas de Salar in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The eye is actually a small lagoon captured reflecting the dark night sky as the Milky Way Galaxy arched overhead. The seemingly smooth band of the Milky Way is really composed of billions of stars, but decorated with filaments of light-absorbing dust and red-glowing nebulas. Additionally, both Jupiter (slightly left the galactic arch) and Saturn (slightly to the right) are visible. The lights of small towns dot the unusual vertical horizon. The rocky terrain around the lagoon appears to some more like the surface of Mars than our Earth. Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (after 1995)

© Miguel Claro (TWAN, Dark Sky Alqueva) — used with the credit NASA publishes

Painting with Jupiter

2025

Painting with Jupiter

In digital brush strokes, Jupiter's signature atmospheric bands and vortices were used to form this interplanetary post-impressionist work of art. The creative image from citizen scientist Rick Lundh uses data from the Juno spacecraft's JunoCam. To paint on the digital canvas, a JunoCam image with contrasting light and dark tones was chosen for processing and an oil-painting software filter applied. The image data was captured during perijove 10. That was Juno's December 16, 2017 close encounter with the solar system's ruling gas giant. At the time the spacecraft was cruising about 13,000 kilometers above northern Jovian cloud tops. Now in an extended mission, Juno has explored Jupiter and its moons since entering orbit around Jupiter in July of 2016.

NASA · public domain

The Great Carina Nebula

2024

The Great Carina Nebula

A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula is more modestly known as NGC 3372. One of our Galaxy's largest star forming regions, it spans over 300 light-years. Like the smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the unaided eye. But at a distance of 7,500 light-years it lies some 5 times farther away. This stunning telescopic view reveals remarkable details of the region's glowing filaments of interstellar gas and obscuring cosmic dust clouds. The Carina Nebula is home to young, extremely massive stars, including the still enigmatic variable Eta Carinae, a star with well over 100 times the mass of the Sun. Eta Carinae is the bright star above the central dark notch in this field and left of the dusty Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324).

© Demison Lopes — used with the credit NASA publishes

Auroral Storm over Lapland

2023

Auroral Storm over Lapland

On some nights the sky is the best show in town. On this night, auroras ruled the sky, and the geomagnetic storm that created this colorful sky show originated from an increasingly active Sun. Surprisingly, since the approaching solar CME the day before had missed the Earth, it was not expected that this storm would create auroras. In the foreground, two happily surprised aurora hunters contemplate the amazing and rapidly changing sky. Regardless of forecasts, though, auroras were reported in the night skies of Earth not only in the far north, but as far south as New Mexico, USA. As captured in a wide-angle image above Saariselkä in northern Finnish Lapland, a bright aurora was visible with an unusually high degree of detail, range of colors, and breadth across the sky. The vivid yellow, green, red and purple auroral colors are caused by oxygen and nitrogen atoms high in Earth's atmosphere reacting to incoming electrons. Open Science: Browse 3,000+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code Library

© Juan Carlos Casado — used with the credit NASA publishes

Stars and Globules in the Running Chicken Nebula

2022

Stars and Globules in the Running Chicken Nebula

The eggs from this gigantic chicken may form into stars. The featured emission nebula, shown in scientifically assigned colors, is cataloged as IC 2944 but known as the Running Chicken Nebula for the shape of its greater appearance. Seen toward the bottom of the image are small, dark molecular clouds rich in obscuring cosmic dust. Called Thackeray's Globules for their discoverer, these "eggs" are potential sites for the gravitational condensation of new stars, although their fates are uncertain as they are also being rapidly eroded away by the intense radiation from nearby young stars. Together with patchy glowing gas and complex regions of reflecting dust, these massive and energetic stars form the open cluster Collinder 249. This gorgeous skyscape spans about 60 light-years at the nebula's estimated 6,500 light-year distance.

© Stefan Steve Bemmerl — used with the credit NASA publishes

The Galactic Center in Infrared

2021

The Galactic Center in Infrared

What does the center of our galaxy look like? In visible light, the Milky Way's center is hidden by clouds of obscuring dust and gas. But in this stunning vista, the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared cameras, penetrate much of the dust revealing the stars of the crowded galactic center region. A mosaic of many smaller snapshots, the detailed, false-color image shows older, cool stars in bluish hues. Red and brown glowing dust clouds are associated with young, hot stars in stellar nurseries. The very center of the Milky Way has recently been found capable of forming newborn stars. The galactic center lies some 26,700 light-years away, toward the constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this picture spans about 900 light-years.

NASA · public domain

What happened on April 19

  1. 1809

    War of the Fifth Coalition: French general Louis-Nicolas Davout defeated an Austrian force in Lower Bavaria, allowing him to rejoin the main French army.

    War of the Fifth Coalition ↗

  2. 1809

    An Austrian corps is defeated by the forces of the Duchy of Warsaw in the Battle of Raszyn, part of the struggles of the Fifth Coalition. On the same day the Austrian main army is defeated by a First French Empire Corps led by Louis-Nicolas Davout at the Battle of Teugen-Hausen in Bavaria, part of a four-day campaign that ended in a French victory.

    Duchy of Warsaw ↗

  3. 1971

    Salyut 1, the first space station, was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome near Tyuratam in the Soviet Union.

    Salyut 1 ↗

  4. 1971

    Launch of Salyut 1, the first space station.

    Salyut 1 ↗

  5. 1975

    Aryabhata (pictured), India's first satellite, was launched from Kapustin Yar in the Soviet Union.

    Aryabhata (satellite) ↗

  6. 1975

    India's first satellite Aryabhata launched in orbit from Kapustin Yar, Russia.

    India ↗

  7. 2001

    Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on STS-100 carrying the Canadarm2 to the International Space Station.

    Space Shuttle Endeavour ↗

Every launch on April 19

18 launches

ONLINE
  1. 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-22SpXSUCCESS
  2. 2026New Glenn | BlueBird 7 (Block 2 #2)BOFAILURE
  3. 2023Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-2SpXSUCCESS
  4. 2013Soyuz 2.1a | Bion-M No. 1RFSASUCCESS
  5. 2004Soyuz-FG | Soyuz TMA-4RFSASUCCESS
  6. 2001Space Shuttle Endeavour / OV-105 | STS-100USASUCCESS
  7. 2000Ariane 42L | Galaxy 4RASASUCCESS
  8. 1992Soyuz-U2 | Progress M-12RFSASUCCESS
  9. 1985Soyuz U | Yantar-4K2 14CCCPSUCCESS
  10. 1984Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 94CCCPSUCCESS
  11. 1983Kosmos-3M | Taifun-2 15CCCPSUCCESS
  12. 1982Proton | Salyut-7CCCPSUCCESS
  13. 1975Kosmos-3M | AryabhataCCCPSUCCESS
  14. 1973Kosmos 11K63 | DS-U2-IK 3 & Kopernik-500CCCPSUCCESS
  15. 1973Voskhod | Zenit-4MK 11CCCPSUCCESS
  16. 1972Thorad SLV-2H Agena D | KH-4B 16USAFSUCCESS
  17. 1971Proton | Salyut 1CCCPSUCCESS
  18. 1966Atlas SLV-3 Agena D | KH-7 27USAFSUCCESS

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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