Launches
ON RECORD6MISSIONS
6 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1969, the most recent 2025.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
May 2 in spaceflight
6 orbital launches flew on May 2, the earliest of them in 1969, and 6 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 6 spaceflight and astronomy events on May 2. Below are the pictures NASA published on May 2 in 1 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD6ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1945 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED1IMAGE
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for May 2, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on May 2
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
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.
NASA · public domain
What happened on May 2
1945
World War II: General Helmuth Weidling, the German commander of Berlin, surrendered to Soviet forces led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, ending the Battle of Berlin.
World War II ↗1952
A De Havilland Comet makes the first jetliner flight with fare-paying passengers, from London to Johannesburg.
De Havilland Comet ↗1963
Berthold Seliger launches a rocket with three stages and a maximum flight altitude of more than 100 kilometres (62 mi) near Cuxhaven. It is the only sounding rocket developed in Germany.
Seliger Forschungs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH ↗1995
Croatian War of Independence: Serb forces began rocket attacks on the Croatian capital Zagreb, killing 7 people and injuring around 200 others.
Croatian War of Independence ↗1995
During the Croatian War of Independence, the Army of the Republic of Serb Krajina fires cluster bombs at Zagreb, killing seven and wounding over 175 civilians.
Croatian War of Independence ↗2000
President Bill Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military.
Bill Clinton ↗
Every launch on May 2
6 launches
ONLINE
- 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-75SpXSUCCESS
- 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | WorldView Legion 1 & 2SpXSUCCESS
- 2022Electron | There and Back Again (Rideshare)RLSUCCESS
- 2019New Shepard | NS-11BOSUCCESS
- 1998Long March 2C/SD | Iridium 69 & 71CASCSUCCESS
- 1969Thorad SLV-2G Agena D | KH-4A 51USAFSUCCESS
FIELD KIT / LIBRARY
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General-audience astronomy and spaceflight — none of it a textbook.
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- 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
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.