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May 30 in spaceflight
Wikipedia records 5 spaceflight and astronomy events on May 30. Below are the pictures NASA published on May 30 in 6 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD5ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1971 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED6IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for May 30, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on May 30
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2026
Supermoon Versus Micromoon
What is so micro about tonight's blue micromoon? Just after sunset, a full moon will appear slightly smaller and dimmer than usual. The reason is that the Moon's fully illuminated phase occurs within a short time of apogee - when the Moon is farthest from the Earth in its elliptical orbit. In fact, tonight's micromoon will be the farthest, smallest, and dimmest Moon this year. But tonight's micromoon is notable for yet another reason: it is also a blue moon, meaning that it is the second full moon in the same month (moon-th). Pictured here, a supermoon -- when the full moon appears near its largest -- is compared to a micromoon as photographed from Kolkata, India in May and December of 2021. Although the next micromoon occurs next month, and the next blue moon at the end of 2028, the next blue micromoon will not occur until 2053.
NASA · public domain
2025
Mars in the Loop
This composite of images spaced a weather-permitting 5 to 9 days apart, from 2024 September 19 (top right) through 2025 May 18 (bottom left), faithfully traces ruddy-colored Mars as it makes a clockwise loop through the constellations Gemini and Cancer in planet Earth's night sky. You can connect the dots and dates with your cursor over the image, but be sure to check out this animation of the Red Planet's 2024/25 retrograde motion. Of course Mars didn't actually reverse the direction of its orbit. Instead, the apparent backwards motion with respect to the background stars is a reflection of the orbital motion of Earth itself. Retrograde motion can be seen each time Earth overtakes and laps planets orbiting farther from the Sun, the Earth moving more rapidly through its own relatively close-in orbit. In this case Mars' apparent eastward motion began to reverse around December 8, when it seemed to linger near open star cluster M44 in Cancer. After wandering back to the west, under Gemini's bright stars Castor and Pollux, Mars returned to pose near M44 by early May. At its brightest near opposition on 2025 January 16, Mars was a mere 96 million kilometers away.
© Tunc Tezel — used with the credit NASA publishes
2024
A Lunar Corona over Paris
Why does a cloudy moon sometimes appear colorful? The effect, called a lunar corona, is created by the quantum mechanical diffraction of light around individual, similarly-sized water droplets in an intervening but mostly-transparent cloud. Since light of different colors has different wavelengths, each color diffracts differently. Lunar coronae are one of the few quantum mechanical color effects that can be easily seen with the unaided eye. Solar coronae are also sometimes evident. The featured image was taken last month from Paris, France. The blue beacon emanating from the Eiffel Tower did not affect the colorful lunar corona. Portal Universe: Random APOD Generator
© Valter Binotto — used with the credit NASA publishes
2023
M27: The Dumbbell Nebula
Is this what will become of our Sun? Quite possibly. The first hint of our Sun's future was discovered inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused with comets. The 27th object on Messier's list, now known as M27 or the Dumbbell Nebula, is a planetary nebula, one of the brightest planetary nebulae on the sky and visible with binoculars toward the constellation of the Fox (Vulpecula). It takes light about 1000 years to reach us from M27, featured here in colors emitted by sulfur (red), hydrogen (green) and oxygen (blue). We now know that in about 6 billion years, our Sun will shed its outer gases into a planetary nebula like M27, while its remaining center will become an X-ray hot white dwarf star. Understanding the physics and significance of M27 was well beyond 18th century science, though. Even today, many things remain mysterious about planetary nebulas, including how their intricate shapes are created.
© Patrick A. Cosgrove — used with the credit NASA publishes
2022
Red Crepuscular Rays from an Eclipse
What's happening behind that island? Things both expected and unexpected. Expected, perhaps, the pictured rays of light -- called crepuscular rays -- originate from the Sun. Unexpected, though, the Sun was being partially eclipsed by the Moon at the time -- late last month. Expected, perhaps, the Sun's rays are quite bright as they shine through gaps in below-horizon clouds. Unexpected, though, the crepuscular rays are quite red, likely the result an abundance of aerosols in Earth's atmosphere scattering away much of the blue light. Expected, with hope, a memorable scene featuring both the Moon and the Sun, superposed. Unfortunately, from this location -- in Uruguay looking toward Argentina -- clouds obscured the eclipse -- which wasn't completely unexpected. However, after packing up to go home, the beauty of bright red crepuscular rays emerged -- quite unexpectedly. Oh -- and that island on the horizon -- it's really two islands.
© Fefo Bouvier — used with the credit NASA publishes
2021
Aurora over Clouds
Auroras usually occur high above the clouds. The auroral glow is created when fast-moving particles ejected from the Sun impact the Earth's magnetosphere, from which charged particles spiral along the Earth's magnetic field to strike atoms and molecules high in the Earth's atmosphere. An oxygen atom, for example, will glow in the green light commonly emitted by an aurora after being energized by such a collision. The lowest part of an aurora will typically occur about 100 kilometers up, while most clouds exist only below about 10 kilometers. The relative heights of clouds and auroras are shown clearly in the featured picture in 2015 from Dyrholaey, Iceland. There, a determined astrophotographer withstood high winds and initially overcast skies in an attempt to capture aurora over a picturesque lighthouse, only to take, by chance, the featured picture including elongated lenticular clouds, along the way. Follow APOD on Instagram in: English, Farsi, Indonesian, Persian, or Portuguese
© Daniele Boffelli — used with the credit NASA publishes
What happened on May 30
1971
Mariner program: Mariner 9 is launched to map 70% of the surface, and to study temporal changes in the atmosphere and surface, of Mars.
Mariner program ↗
1998
Nuclear Testing: Pakistan conducts an underground test in the Kharan Desert. It is reported to be a plutonium device with yield of 20kt TNT equivalent.
Nuclear weapons testing ↗
2020
Crew Dragon Demo-2 became the first commercial mission to the International Space Station.
Crew Dragon Demo-2 ↗2020
Crew Dragon Demo-2 launches from Kennedy Space Center, becoming the first crewed orbital spacecraft to launch from the United States since 2011 and the first commercial flight to the International Space Station.
Crew Dragon Demo-2 ↗
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. This archive is still being mirrored, so some days are incomplete. 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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