Launches
ON RECORD18MISSIONS
16 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1958, the most recent 2025.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
July 26 in spaceflight
18 orbital launches flew on July 26, the earliest of them in 1958, and 16 reached orbit. Below are the pictures NASA published on July 26 in 6 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
NONE FOUND0ENTRIES
Wikipedia records no spaceflight or astronomy event on this date.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED6IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for July 26, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on July 26
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2026
NASA Science
Stickney Crater, the largest crater on the martian moon Phobos, is named for Chloe Angeline Stickney Hall, mathematician and wife of astronomer Asaph Hall. Asaph Hall discovered both the Red Planet's moons in 1877. Over 9 kilometers across, Stickney is nearly half the diameter of Phobos itself, so large that the impact that blasted out the crater likely came close to shattering the tiny moon. This enhanced-color image of Stickney and surroundings was recorded by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it passed within some six thousand kilometers of Phobos in March of 2008. Even though the surface gravity of asteroid-like Phobos is less than 1/1000th Earth's gravity, streaks suggest loose material slid down inside the crater walls over time. Light bluish regions near the crater's rim could indicate a relatively freshly exposed surface. The origin of the curious grooves along the surface is mysterious but may be related to tidal stresses experienced by close-orbiting Phobos or the crater-forming impact itself.Tomorrow's picture: farside
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.
© Robert Nemiroff — used with the credit NASA publishes
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.
© Roberto Marinoni — used with the credit NASA publishes
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.
NASA · public domain
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
Every launch on July 26
18 launches
ONLINE
- 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 10-26SpXSUCCESS
- 2025Vega-C | CO3D & MicroCarbASASUCCESS
- 2023Long March 2D | Yaogan 36 Group 05CASCSUCCESS
- 2019Long March 2C | Yaogan-30-05CASCSUCCESS
- 2019Starship Hopper | 20m HopSpXSUCCESS
- 2018SpaceShipTwo | VSS Unity PF03VGSUCCESS
- 2011Long March 3A | Compass-IGSO-4CASCSUCCESS
- 2008Soyuz 2.1b | Persona 1VKSSUCCESS
- 2006Dnepr | BelKAISCKFAILURE
- 2005Space Shuttle Discovery / OV-103 | STS-114USASUCCESS
- 1988Tsiklon-3 | Meteor-3 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1983Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 82CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Feng Bao 1 | JSSW 1CASCSUCCESS
- 1974Voskhod | Zenit-2M 49CCCPSUCCESS
- 1971Saturn V | Apollo 15NASASUCCESS
- 1969Thor Delta M | INTELSAT III F-5USAFFAILURE
- 1963Thor Delta B | Syncom 2USAFSUCCESS
- 1958Juno-I | Explorer 4ABMASUCCESS
FIELD KIT / LIBRARY
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General-audience astronomy and spaceflight — none of it a textbook.
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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.
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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.
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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.