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May 14 in spaceflight

24 orbital launches flew on May 14, the earliest of them in 1966, and 23 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 3 spaceflight and astronomy events on May 14. Below are the pictures NASA published on May 14 in 6 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.

Launches

ON RECORD

24MISSIONS

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

Recorded events

IN THE RECORD

3ENTRIES

Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1973 onward.

Pictures from this date

PUBLISHED

6IMAGES

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for May 14, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.

Published on May 14

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

Messier Catalog at Uniform Scale

2026

Messier Catalog at Uniform Scale

What are some of the most interesting astronomical objects you can see in the night sky? Armed with a good pair of binoculars or a small telescope, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you can look for the very popular objects in the Messier Catalog. Most of them, but not all, are also visible from the southern half of the Earth. The featured image shows all 110 objects in the catalog at uniform scale -- the same magnification. Charles Messier created the catalog in the 18th century. He was interested in comets, and his catalog was a list of known comet-like "objects to avoid" in the sky when observing or hunting for comets. The deep sky objects in the catalog include a supernova remnant (the Crab Nebula, M1), other galaxies (such as Andromeda, M31), nebulae (e.g. the Orion Nebula, M42, a star-forming region) and stellar clusters (such as the Pleiades, M45, a bright young open cluster).

NASA · public domain

NGC 1360: The Robin's Egg Nebula

2025

NGC 1360: The Robin's Egg Nebula

This pretty nebula lies some 1,500 light-years away, its shape and color in this telescopic view reminiscent of a robin's egg. The cosmic cloud spans about 3 light-years, nestled securely within the boundaries of the southern constellation of the Furnace (Fornax). Recognized as a planetary nebula, egg-shaped NGC 1360 doesn't represent a beginning, though. Instead, it corresponds to a brief and final phase in the evolution of an aging star. In fact, visible at the center of the nebula, the central star of NGC 1360 is known to be a binary star system likely consisting of two evolved white dwarf stars, less massive but much hotter than the Sun. Their intense and otherwise invisible ultraviolet radiation has stripped away electrons from the atoms in their mutually surrounding gaseous shroud. The blue-green hue inside of NGC 1360 seen here is the strong emission produced as electrons recombine with doubly ionized oxygen atoms. Celestial Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)

© Andrea Iorio, Vikas Chander & ShaRA Team — used with the credit NASA publishes

The 37 Cluster

2024

The 37 Cluster

For the mostly harmless denizens of planet Earth, the brighter stars of open cluster NGC 2169 seem to form a cosmic 37. Did you expect 42? From our perspective, the improbable numerical asterism appears solely by chance. It lies at an estimated distance of 3,300 light-years toward the constellation Orion. As far as galactic or open star clusters go, NGC 2169 is a small one, spanning about 7 light-years. Formed at the same time from the same cloud of dust and gas, the stars of NGC 2169 are only about 11 million years old. Such clusters are expected to disperse over time as they encounter other stars, interstellar clouds, and experience gravitational tides while hitchhiking through the galaxy. Over four billion years ago, our own Sun was likely formed in a similar open cluster of stars. Gallery: Earth Aurora from Solar Active Region 3664

© Sergio Eguivar — used with the credit NASA publishes

To Fly Free in Space

2023

To Fly Free in Space

What would it be like to fly free in space? At about 100 meters from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, Bruce McCandless II was living the dream -- floating farther out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless, pictured, was floating free in space. During Space Shuttle mission 41-B in 1984, McCandless and fellow NASA astronaut Robert Stewart were the first to experience such an "untethered space walk". The MMU worked by shooting jets of nitrogen and was used to help deploy and retrieve satellites. With a mass over 140 kilograms, an MMU is heavy on Earth, but, like everything, is weightless when drifting in orbit. The MMU was later replaced with the SAFER backpack propulsion unit.

NASA · public domain

Ice Halos by Moonlight

2022

Ice Halos by Moonlight

An almost full moon on April 15 brought these luminous apparitions to a northern spring night over Alberta Canada. On that night, bright moonlight refracted and reflected by hexagonal ice crystals in high clouds created a complex of halos and arcs more commonly seen by sunlight in daytime skies. While the colors of the arcs and moondogs or paraselenae were just visible to the unaided eye, a blend of exposures ranging from 30 seconds to 1/20 second was used to render this moonlit wide-angle skyscape. The Big Dipper at the top of the frame sits just above a smiling and rainbow-hued circumzenithal arc. With Arcturus left and Regulus toward the right the Moon is centered in its often spotted 22 degree halo. May 15 will also see the bright light of a Full Moon shining in Earth's night skies. Tomorrow's Full Moon will be dimmed for a while though, as it slides through Earth's shadow in a total lunar eclipse. Watch: May 15-16 Total Lunar Eclipse

© Alan Dyer — used with the credit NASA publishes

M104: The Sombrero Galaxy

2021

M104: The Sombrero Galaxy

A gorgeous spiral galaxy, M104 is famous for its nearly edge-on profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes. Seen in silhouette against an extensive central bulge of stars, the swath of cosmic dust lends a broad brimmed hat-like appearance to the galaxy suggesting a more popular moniker, the Sombrero Galaxy. This sharp optical view of the well-known galaxy made from ground-based image data was processed to preserve details often lost in overwhelming glare of M104's bright central bulge. Also known as NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy can be seen across the spectrum, and is host to a central supermassive black hole. About 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light-years away, M104 is one of the largest galaxies at the southern edge of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Still the colorful spiky foreground stars in this field of view lie well within our own Milky Way galaxy.

© Bray Falls — used with the credit NASA publishes

What happened on May 14

  1. 1973

    Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched.

    Skylab ↗

  2. 2010

    Space Shuttle Atlantis launches on the STS-132 mission to deliver the first shuttle-launched Russian ISS component — Rassvet. This was originally slated to be the final launch of Atlantis, before Congress approved STS-135.

    Space Shuttle Atlantis ↗

Every launch on May 14

24 launches

ONLINE
  1. 2026Zhuque-2E Block 2 | Mass SimulatorLSSUCCESS
  2. 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-67SpXSUCCESS
  3. 2025Long March 2D | Space Computing ConstellationCASCSUCCESS
  4. 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 8-7SpXSUCCESS
  5. 2023Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 5-9SpXSUCCESS
  6. 2022Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 4-15SpXSUCCESS
  7. 2013Proton-M Briz-M | Eutelsat 3D (W3D)ILSSUCCESS
  8. 2010Space Shuttle Atlantis / OV-104 | STS-132USASUCCESS
  9. 2009Ariane 5 ECA | Herschel & PlanckASASUCCESS
  10. 2008Soyuz U | Progress M-64RFSASUCCESS
  11. 1998Soyuz U | Progress M-39RFSASUCCESS
  12. 1997Molniya-M | US-K 78PRSCSUCCESS
  13. 1996Soyuz U | Yantar-1KFT 18RFSAFAILURE
  14. 1995Titan 401A Centaur | Orion 3USAFSUCCESS
  15. 1992Delta II | Palapa B4USAFSUCCESS
  16. 1991Atlas E | NOAA 12USAFSUCCESS
  17. 1986Soyuz U | Zenit-8 31CCCPSUCCESS
  18. 1984Soyuz U | Yantar-4KS1 2CCCPSUCCESS
  19. 1982Tsiklon-2 | US-A 20CCCPSUCCESS
  20. 1981Vostok 8A92M | Meteor-2 7CCCPSUCCESS
  21. 1981Soyuz-U | Soyuz 40CCCPSUCCESS
  22. 1980Kosmos-3M | Taifun-1B 2CCCPSUCCESS
  23. 1973Saturn V | Skylab 1NASASUCCESS
  24. 1966Atlas SLV-3 Agena D | KH-7 28USAFSUCCESS

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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