Launches
ON RECORD24MISSIONS
23 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1966, the most recent 2026.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
2015 · 11 years ago today
New Horizons at Pluto
New Horizons crossed the Pluto system at fourteen kilometres a second and found a plain of nitrogen ice with no craters on it.
read more1965 · 61 years ago today
The first close pictures of Mars
Mariner 4 returned twenty-one photographs of a cratered surface, ending a century of speculation about canals.
read more
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
July 14 in spaceflight
24 orbital launches flew on July 14, the earliest of them in 1966, and 23 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 3 spaceflight and astronomy events on July 14. Below are the pictures NASA published on July 14 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 1911 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED6IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for July 14, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on July 14
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
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
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
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
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.
© Dan Bartlett — used with the credit NASA publishes
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.
NASA · public domain
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.
NASA · public domain
What happened on July 14
1911
Harry Atwood, an exhibition pilot for the Wright brothers, is greeted by president William Howard Taft after he lands his aeroplane on the South Lawn of the White House, having flown from Boston.
Harry Atwood ↗1965
Mariner 4 flyby of Mars takes the first close-up photos of another planet. The photographs take approximately six hours to be transmitted back to Earth.
Mariner 4 ↗2015
NASA's New Horizons probe performs the first flyby of Pluto, and thus completes the initial survey of the Solar System.
NASA ↗
Every launch on July 14
24 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Soyuz 2.1a | Soyuz MS-29RFSASUCCESS
- 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 10-45SpXSUCCESS
- 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 15-14SpXSUCCESS
- 2025Long March 7 | Tianzhou-9CASCSUCCESS
- 2023LVM-3 | Chandrayaan-3ISROSUCCESS
- 2017Soyuz-2.1a/Fregat | Kanopus-V-IKRFSAPARTIAL
- 2014Falcon 9 v1.1 | Orbcomm OG2 Mission 1SpXSUCCESS
- 2009Falcon 1 | RazakSATSpXSUCCESS
- 2000Atlas IIAS | Echostar VILMTSUCCESS
- 1994Kosmos-3M | Nadezhda 7NPSUCCESS
- 1993Soyuz-U-PVB | Yantar-4K2 70VKSSUCCESS
- 1992Proton | Gorizont 26KhSCSUCCESS
- 1988Kosmos-3M | Taifun-1 21CCCPSUCCESS
- 1987Kosmos-3M | Taifun-1B 10CCCPSUCCESS
- 1983Atlas E/SGS-2 | GPS 8USAFSUCCESS
- 1980Proton-K/DM | EkranCCCPSUCCESS
- 1978Molniya-M | Molniya-1K 41CCCPSUCCESS
- 1978Delta 2914 | Geos 2USAFSUCCESS
- 1977Delta 2914 | HimawariUSAFSUCCESS
- 1976Soyuz U | Zenit-2M 69CCCPSUCCESS
- 1974Atlas F/PTS | NTS 1USAFSUCCESS
- 1967Atlas Centaur D | Surveyor 4USAFSUCCESS
- 1966Voskhod | Zenit-2 40CCCPSUCCESS
- 1966Atlas D | OV1-7USAFSUCCESS
FIELD KIT / LIBRARY
SPONSORED
General-audience astronomy and spaceflight — none of it a textbook.
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- VIEW
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.
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.