Launches
ON RECORD22MISSIONS
22 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1965, the most recent 2024.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
June 24 in spaceflight
22 orbital launches flew on June 24, the earliest of them in 1965, and 22 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 1 spaceflight and astronomy event on June 24. Below are the pictures NASA published on June 24 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 -1312 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED5IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for June 24, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on June 24
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2025
In the Center of Spiral Galaxy M61
Is there a spiral galaxy in the center of this spiral galaxy? Sort of. Image data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory, and smaller telescopes on planet Earth are combined in this detailed portrait of face-on spiral galaxy Messier 61 (M61) and its bright center. A mere 55 million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies, M61 is also known as NGC 4303. It's considered to be an example of a barred spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way. Like other spiral galaxies, M61 also features sweeping spiral arms, cosmic dust lanes, pinkish star forming regions, and young blue star clusters. Its core houses an active supermassive black hole surrounded by a bright nuclear spiral -- infalling star-forming gas that itself looks like a separate spiral galaxy. APOD Turns 30!: Free public lecture in Cork, Ireland TONIGHT (Tuesday) at 7 pm
NASA · public domain
2024
JADES-GS-z14-0: A New Farthest Object
What if we could see back to the beginning of the universe? We could see galaxies forming. But what did galaxies look like back then? These questions took a step forward recently with the release of the analysis of a James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) image that included the most distant object yet discovered. Most galaxies formed at about 3 billion years after the Big Bang, but some formed earlier. Pictured in the inset box is JADES-GS-z14-0, a faint smudge of a galaxy that formed only 300 million years after the universe started. In technical terms, this galaxy lies at the record redshift of z=14.32, and so existed when the universe was only one fiftieth of the its present age. Practically all of the objects in the featured photograph are galaxies.
NASA · public domain
2023
3D Ingenuity
The multicolor, stereo imaging Mastcam-Z on the Perseverance rover zoomed in to capture this 3D close-up (get out your red/blue glasses) of the Mars Ingenuity helicopter on mission sol 45. That's Earth-date 2021 April 5. Casting a shadow on the Martian surface, Ingenuity is standing alone on its four landing legs next to the rover's wheel tracks. The experimental helicopter's solar panel, charging batteries that keep it warm through the cold Martian nights and power its flight, sits just above Ingenuity's two 1.2 meter (4 foot) long counter-rotating blades. Thirteen sols later, on April 19, Ingenuity became the first aircraft to perform powered, controlled flight on another planet. It has since gone on to complete more than 50 flights through the thin atmosphere of Mars.
NASA · public domain
2022
Filaprom on the Western Limb
A solar filament is an enormous stream of incandescent plasma suspended above the active surface of the Sun by looping magnetic fields. Seen against the solar disk it looks dark only because it's a little cooler, and so slightly dimmer, than the solar photosphere. Suspended above the solar limb the same structure looks bright when viewed against the blackness of space and is called a solar prominence. A filaprom would be both of course, a stream of magnetized plasma that crosses in front of the solar disk and extends beyond the Sun's edge. In this hydrogen-alpha close-up of the Sun captured on June 22, active region AR3038 is near the center of the frame. Active region AR3032 is seen at the far right, close to the Sun's western limb. As AR3032 is carried by rotation toward the Sun's visible edge, what was once a giant filament above it is now partly seen as a prominence, How big is AR3032's filaprom? For scale planet Earth is shown near the top right corner.
© Martin Wise — used with the credit NASA publishes
2021
Messier 99
Grand design spiral galaxy Messier 99 looks majestic on a truly cosmic scale. This recently processed full galaxy portrait stretches over 70,000 light-years across M99. The sharp view is a combination of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared image data from the Hubble Space Telescope. About 50 million light-years distant toward the well-groomed constellation Coma Bernices, the face-on spiral is a member of the nearby Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Also cataloged as NGC 4254, a close encounter with another Virgo cluster member has likely influenced the shape of its well-defined, blue spiral arms.
NASA · public domain
What happened on June 24
Every launch on June 24
22 launches
ONLINE
- 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 9-2SpXSUCCESS
- 2019Long March 3B/E | Beidou-3 IGSO-2CASCSUCCESS
- 2016Atlas V 551 | MUOS-5ULASUCCESS
- 2006Soyuz U | Progress M-57RFSASUCCESS
- 2005Proton | Ekspress AM-3KhSCSUCCESS
- 2002Titan II SLV | NOAA 17USAFSUCCESS
- 2000Proton-K/DM-2M | Ekspress 3AKhSCSUCCESS
- 1999Delta II | FUSEUSAFSUCCESS
- 1998Soyuz-U-PVB | Yantar-4K2 78RVSN RFSUCCESS
- 1994Atlas I | UHF F/O F3GDSUCCESS
- 1993Tsiklon-3 | Strela-3 95 to 100VKSSUCCESS
- 1982Soyuz-U | Soyuz T-6CCCPSUCCESS
- 1981Molniya-M | Molniya-1K 50CCCPSUCCESS
- 1977Tsiklon-3 | EPN 03.0380 1CCCPSUCCESS
- 1977Molniya-M | Molniya-1K 37CCCPSUCCESS
- 1976Soyuz U | Zenit-2M 68CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Kosmos 11K63 | DS-P1-Yu 77CCCPSUCCESS
- 1974Proton | Salyut-3CCCPSUCCESS
- 1971Voskhod | Zenit-2M 20CCCPSUCCESS
- 1969Voskhod | Zenit-2 75CCCPSUCCESS
- 1966Thor SLV-2A Agena D | PageosUSAFSUCCESS
- 1965Thor DM-21 Ablestar | Transit-O 4USAFSUCCESS
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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