Skip to content
DELTA-V

ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR

May 19 in spaceflight

29 orbital launches flew on May 19, the earliest of them in 1964, and 28 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 6 spaceflight and astronomy events on May 19. Below are the pictures NASA published on May 19 in 6 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.

DATE

Launches

ON RECORD

29MISSIONS

28 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1964, the most recent 2026.

Recorded events

IN THE RECORD

6ENTRIES

Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1922 onward.

Pictures from this date

PUBLISHED

6IMAGES

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

Published on May 19

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

NASA Science

2026

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

NASA Science

2025

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

NASA Science

2024

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

NASA Science

2023

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.

© Sophie Paulin — used with the credit NASA publishes

NASA Science

2022

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.

© Michael Cain — used with the credit NASA publishes

NASA Science

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.

© Jason Guenzel — used with the credit NASA publishes

What happened on May 19

  3. 1961

    Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly by another planet by passing Venus (the probe had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back any data).

    Venera program ↗

  6. 2000

    Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on mission STS-101 to resupply the International Space Station.

    Space Shuttle Atlantis ↗

Every launch on May 19

29 launches

ONLINE
  1. 2026Vega-C | Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE)AvioSUCCESS
  2. 2025Ceres-1S | Tianqi 16-18 & 20GESUCCESS
  3. 2024New Shepard | NS-25BOSUCCESS
  4. 2023Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-3SpXSUCCESS
  5. 2022Atlas V N22 | CST-100 Starliner Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2)ULASUCCESS
  6. 2022Soyuz 2.1a | Kosmos 2556 (Bars-M No. 3)VKSSUCCESS
  7. 2021Long March 4B | Haiyang 2DCASCSUCCESS
  8. 2011SpaceShipTwo | VSS Enterprise GF09VGSUCCESS
  9. 2009Minotaur I | Tacsat 3OSCSUCCESS
  10. 2004Atlas IIAS | AMC 11LMTSUCCESS
  11. 2000Space Shuttle Atlantis / OV-104 | STS-101USASUCCESS
  12. 1996Space Shuttle Endeavour / OV-105 | STS-77LMSOSUCCESS
  13. 1994Pegasus HAPS | Space Test Experiments Platform 2 (STEP-2)OSCSUCCESS
  14. 1990Proton | Uragan 36 to 38CCCPSUCCESS
  15. 1988Soyuz U | Zenit-8 63CCCPSUCCESS
  16. 1987Soyuz-U2 | Progress 30CCCPSUCCESS
  17. 1984Proton | Uragan 6 & 7CCCPSUCCESS
  18. 1983Atlas SLV-3D Centaur | Intelsat 506USAFSUCCESS
  19. 1983Kosmos-3M | Taifun-1B 5CCCPSUCCESS
  20. 1981Vostok 8A92M | Tselina-D 29CCCPSUCCESS
  21. 1978Tsiklon-2 | IS-A 9CCCPSUCCESS
  22. 1977Kosmos-3M | DS-P1-M 11CCCPSUCCESS
  23. 1972Molniya-M | Molniya-2 2CCCPSUCCESS
  24. 1971Proton | Mars-2CCCPSUCCESS
  25. 1971Kosmos 11K63 | DS-P1-Yu 42CCCPSUCCESS
  26. 1966R-36O 8K69 | OGCh 4CCCPSUCCESS
  27. 1966Scout A | Transit-O 9USAFSUCCESS
  28. 1965Little Joe II | A-003NASAFAILURE
  29. 1964Atlas Agena D | KH-7 8USAFSUCCESS

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.

  • 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.

    VIEW

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.