Launches
ON RECORD26MISSIONS
21 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1966, the most recent 2026.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
June 21 in spaceflight
26 orbital launches flew on June 21, the earliest of them in 1966, and 21 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 3 spaceflight and astronomy events on June 21. Below are the pictures NASA published on June 21 in 6 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD3ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1993 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED6IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for June 21, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on June 21
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2026
Keogram: The Sky in 2025
What if you could see the entire sky -- all at once -- for an entire year? That, very nearly, is what is pictured here. Every 15 seconds during 2025, an all-sky camera took an image of the sky over the Netherlands. Central columns from these images were then aligned and combined to create the featured keogram, with January at the top, December at the bottom, and the middle of the night running vertically just left of center. What do we see? Most obviously, the daytime sky is mostly blue, while the nighttime sky is mostly black. The twelve light bands crossing the night sky are caused by the glow of the Moon. The thinnest part of the black hourglass shape occurs during the summer solstice, like today, when days are the longest, while the thickest part occurs at the winter solstice. Equinoxes can also be located in the keogram, for example the northern-spring equinox from one year ago is about three-quarters of the way up.
NASA · public domain
2025
Two Worlds, Two Analemmas
Sure, that figure-8 shaped curve you get when you mark the position of the Sun in Earth's sky at the same time each day over one year is called an analemma. On the left, Earth's figure-8 analemma was traced by combining wide-angle digital images recorded during the year from December 2011 through December 2012. But the shape of an analemma depends on the eccentricity of a planet's orbit and the tilt of its axis of rotation, so analemma curves can look different for different worlds. Take Mars for example. The Red Planet's axial tilt is similar to Earth's, but its orbit around the same sun is more eccentric (less circular) than Earth's orbit. As seen from the Martian surface, the analemma traced in the right hand panel is shaped more like a tear drop. The Mars rover Opportunity captured the images used over the Martian year corresponding to Earth dates July 2006 to June 2008. Of course, each world's solstice dates still lie at the top and bottom of their different analemma curves. The last Mars northern summer solstice was May 29, 2025. Our fair planet's 2025 northern summer solstice is at June 21, 2:42 UTC.
© Tunc Tezel — used with the credit NASA publishes
2024
Hubble's NGC 1546
Returning to science operations on June 14, the Hubble Space Telescope used its new pointing mode to capture this sharp image of spiral galaxy NGC 1546. A member of the Dorado galaxy group, the island universe lies a mere 50 million light-years away. The galactic disk of NGC 1546 is tilted to our line-of-sight, with the yellowish light of the old stars and bluish regions of newly formed stars shining through the galaxy's dust lanes. More distant background galaxies are scattered throughout this Hubble view. Launched in 1990, Hubble has been exploring the cosmos for more than three decades, recently celebrating its 34th anniversary.
NASA · public domain
2023
Three Sun Paths
Does the Sun follow the same path every day? No. The Sun's path changes during the year, tracing a longer route during the summer than the winter. Pictured here, the Sun's arc was captured from noon to sunset on three days, from highest in the sky to lowest: summer solstice, equinox, and winter solstice. The images were taken near Gatto Corvino Village in Sicily, Italy in 2020 and 2021. The path and time the Sun spends in the sky is more important in determining the season than how close the Earth is to the Sun. In fact, the Earth is closest to the Sun in January, during northern winter. Today is a solstice, so today the Sun is taking its longest path of the year across the sky in Earth's northern hemisphere, but the shortest path in the southern hemisphere.
© Marcella Giulia Pace & Giuseppe De Donà — used with the credit NASA publishes
2022
Analemma over Taipei
Does the Sun return to the same spot on the sky every day? No. A better and more visual answer to that question is an analemma, a composite of images taken at the same time and from the same place over the course of a year. The featured analemma was compiled at 4:30 pm many afternoons from Taiwan during 2021, with the city skyline of Taipei in the foreground, including tall Taipei 101. The Sun's location in December -- at the December solstice -- is shown on the far left, while its location at the June solstice is captured on the far right. Also shown are the positions of the Sun throughout the rest of the day on the solstices and equinoxes. Today is the June solstice of 2022, the day in Earth's northern hemisphere when the Sun spends the longest time in the sky. In many countries, today marks the official beginning of a new season, for example winter in Earth's southern hemisphere.
© Meiying Lee — used with the credit NASA publishes
2021
The Tadpole Galaxy from Hubble
Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista, based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Dragon (Draco). Its eye-catching tail is about 280 thousand light-years long and features massive, bright blue star clusters. One story goes that a more compact intruder galaxy crossed in front of Arp 188 - from right to left in this view - and was slung around behind the Tadpole by their gravitational attraction. During the close encounter, tidal forces drew out the spiral galaxy's stars, gas, and dust forming the spectacular tail. The intruder galaxy itself, estimated to lie about 300 thousand light-years behind the Tadpole, can be seen through foreground spiral arms at the upper right. Following its terrestrial namesake, the Tadpole Galaxy will likely lose its tail as it grows older, the tail's star clusters forming smaller satellites of the large spiral galaxy. APOD in world languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Beijing), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Farsi, French, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Montenegrin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Taiwanese, Turkish, Turkish, and Ukrainian
NASA · public domain
What happened on June 21
1993
Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on STS-57 to retrieve the European Retrievable Carrier (EURECA) satellite. It is also the first shuttle mission to carry the Spacehab module.
Space Shuttle Endeavour ↗
2004
SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight.
SpaceShipOne ↗
Every launch on June 21
26 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-28SpXSUCCESS
- 2022Nuri | Flight Test 2KARISUCCESS
- 2011Soyuz-U | Progress M-11M (43P)RFSASUCCESS
- 2011SpaceShipTwo | VSS Enterprise GF13VGSUCCESS
- 2010Dnepr 1 | TanDEM-XISCKSUCCESS
- 2009Zenit | Measat 3ASLSUCCESS
- 2006Delta II | MITExUSAFSUCCESS
- 2005Volna | Cosmos-1Makeyev Rocket Design BureauFAILURE
- 2005Molniya-M | Molniya-3KPRSCFAILURE
- 1993Space Shuttle Endeavour / OV-105 | STS-57LSOCSUCCESS
- 1990Molniya-M | US-K 64CCCPFAILURE
- 1989Proton | Raduga-1 1CCCPSUCCESS
- 1988Kosmos-3M | Strela-2M 45CCCPSUCCESS
- 1985Zenit-2 | GVM Tselina-2CCCPFAILURE
- 1985Soyuz U | Resurs-F1 17F41 55LCCCPSUCCESS
- 1985Soyuz U | Progress 24CCCPSUCCESS
- 1984Kosmos-3M | Nadezhda 3CCCPSUCCESS
- 1980Molniya-M | Molniya-1K 47CCCPSUCCESS
- 1978Kosmos-3M | Strela-2M 18CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Delta 1910 | OSO 8USAFSUCCESS
- 1974Kosmos-3M | Tselina-O 24CCCPSUCCESS
- 1973Voskhod | Zenit-2M 39CCCPSUCCESS
- 1972Voskhod | Zenit-2M 29CCCPSUCCESS
- 1969Thor Delta E1 | IMP GUSAFFAILURE
- 1968Voskhod | Zenit-2M 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1966Thor SLV-2A Agena D | KH-4A 34USAFSUCCESS
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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