Launches
ON RECORD20MISSIONS
20 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1963, the most recent 2025.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
May 7 in spaceflight
20 orbital launches flew on May 7, the earliest of them in 1963, and 20 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 1 spaceflight and astronomy event on May 7. Below are the pictures NASA published on May 7 in 5 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD1ENTRY
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1992 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED5IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for May 7, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on May 7
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2025
Galaxy Wars: M81 versus M82
In the upper left corner, surrounded by blue arms and dotted with red nebulas, is spiral galaxy M81. In the lower right corner, marked by a light central line and surrounded by red glowing gas, is irregular galaxy M82. This stunning vista shows these two mammoth galaxies locked in gravitational combat, as they have been for the past billion years. The gravity from each galaxy dramatically affects the other during each hundred-million-year pass. Last go-round, M82's gravity likely raised density waves rippling around M81, resulting in the richness of M81's spiral arms. But M81 left M82 with violent star forming regions and colliding gas clouds so energetic the galaxy glows in X-rays. This big battle is seen from Earth through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy. In a few billion years, only one galaxy will remain.
© Collaborative Astrophotography Team (CAT) — used with the credit NASA publishes
2024
Black Hole Accreting with Jet
What happens when a black hole devours a star? Many details remain unknown, but observations are providing new clues. In 2014, a powerful explosion was recorded by the ground-based robotic telescopes of the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (Project ASAS-SN), with followed-up observations by instruments including NASA's Earth-orbiting Swift satellite. Computer modeling of these emissions fit a star being ripped apart by a distant supermassive black hole. The results of such a collision are portrayed in the featured artistic illustration. The black hole itself is a depicted as a tiny black dot in the center. As matter falls toward the hole, it collides with other matter and heats up. Surrounding the black hole is an accretion disk of hot matter that used to be the star, with a jet emanating from the black hole's spin axis. Fall towards eternity: It's Black Hole Week at NASA!
NASA · public domain
2023
The Helix Nebula from CFHT
Will our Sun look like this one day? The Helix Nebula is one of brightest and closest examples of a planetary nebula, a gas cloud created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The outer gasses of the star expelled into space appear from our vantage point as if we are looking down a helix. The remnant central stellar core, destined to become a white dwarf star, glows in light so energetic it causes the previously expelled gas to fluoresce. The Helix Nebula, given a technical designation of NGC 7293, lies about 700 light-years away towards the constellation of the Water Bearer (Aquarius) and spans about 2.5 light-years. The featured picture was taken with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) located atop a dormant volcano in Hawaii, USA. A close-up of the inner edge of the Helix Nebula shows complex gas knots of unknown origin.
NASA · public domain
2022
Firefall by Moonlight
On certain dates in February, an elusive firefall can be spotted at sunset in Yosemite National Park, when water flows, the weather cooperates and the direction to the setting Sun is just right. Often photographed from vantage points below, at the right moment the park's seasonal Horsetail Fall is isolated in the shadows of the steep walls of El Capitan. Then, still illuminated with rays of reddened sunlight the waterfall briefly takes on a dramatic, fiery appearance. But a Horsetail firefall can be photographed by moonlight too. Even more elusive by moonlight, the firefall effect can also be seen when a bright Moon sets at the right direction along the western horizon. And skies were clear enough for this well-planned imaging of an ephemeral Horsetail firefall, lit by a bright gibbous Moon setting in the early morning hours of April 15.
© Tara Mostofi — used with the credit NASA publishes
2021
Mercury-Redstone 3 Launch
Sixty years ago, near the dawn of the space age, NASA controllers "lit the candle" and sent Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard arcing into space atop a Redstone rocket. His cramped space capsule was dubbed Freedom 7. Broadcast live to a global television audience, the historic Mercury-Redstone 3 (MR-3) spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Florida at 9:34 a.m. Eastern Time on May 5, 1961. The flight of Freedom 7, the first space flight by an American, followed less than a month after the first human venture into space by Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The 15 minute sub-orbital flight achieved an altitude of 116 miles and a maximum speed of 5,134 miles per hour. As Shepard looked back near the peak of Freedom 7's trajectory, he could see the outlines of the west coast of Florida, Lake Okeechobe in central Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bahamas. Shepard would later view planet Earth from a more distant perspective and walk on the Moon as commander of the Apollo 14 mission.
NASA · public domain
What happened on May 7
1992
Space Shuttle program: The Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on its first mission, STS-49.
Space Shuttle program ↗
Every launch on May 7
20 launches
ONLINE
- 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-93SpXSUCCESS
- 2024Long March 6C | Maiden FlightCASCSUCCESS
- 2013Vega | Proba-V, VNREDSat 1A, ESTCube-1ASASUCCESS
- 2011Atlas V 401 | SBIRS GEO Flight 1 (USA-230) (SBIRS GEO-1)ULASUCCESS
- 2009Soyuz U | Progress M-02MRFSASUCCESS
- 2002Proton-K/DM-2M | DirecTV-5KhSCSUCCESS
- 1998Proton-K/DM-2M | Echostar IVKhSCSUCCESS
- 1998Molniya-M | US-K 79PRSCSUCCESS
- 1992Space Shuttle Endeavour / OV-105 | STS-49LSOCSUCCESS
- 1990Soyuz U | Yantar-4K2 52CCCPSUCCESS
- 1984Soyuz U | Progress 21CCCPSUCCESS
- 1983Tsiklon-2 | US-P 16CCCPSUCCESS
- 1981Kosmos-3M | Strela-2M 24CCCPSUCCESS
- 1980Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 18CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Delta 2914 | Anik A3USAFSUCCESS
- 1975Scout F-1 | SAS 3NASASUCCESS
- 1971Kosmos-3M | Strela-1M 9-16CCCPSUCCESS
- 1968Kosmos-3M | Zaliv 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1965Vostok 8A92 | Zenit-2 27CCCPSUCCESS
- 1963Thor Delta B | Telstar 2USAFSUCCESS
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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