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October 3 in spaceflight
Wikipedia records 4 spaceflight and astronomy events on October 3. Below are the pictures NASA published on October 3 in 5 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD4ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1942 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED5IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for October 3, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on October 3
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2025
Pandora's Cluster of Galaxies
This deep field mosaicked image presents a stunning view of galaxy cluster Abell 2744 recorded by the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam. Also dubbed Pandora's Cluster, Abell 2744 itself appears to be a ponderous merger of three different massive galaxy clusters. It lies some 3.5 billion light-years away, toward the constellation Sculptor. Dominated by dark matter, the mega-cluster warps and distorts the fabric of spacetime, gravitationally lensing even more distant objects. Redder than the Pandora cluster galaxies, many of the lensed sources are very distant galaxies in the early Universe, their lensed images stretched and distorted into arcs. Of course, distinctive diffraction spikes mark foreground Milky Way stars. At the Pandora Cluster's estimated distance, this cosmic box spans about 6 million light-years. But don't panic. You can explore the tantalizing region in a 2 minute video tour.
NASA · public domain
2024
Eclipse at Sunrise
The second solar eclipse of 2024 began in the Pacific. On October 2nd the Moon's shadow swept from west to east, with an annular eclipse visible along a narrow antumbral shadow path tracking mostly over ocean, crossing land near the southern tip of South America, and ending in the southern Atlantic. The dramatic total annular eclipse phase is known to some as a ring of fire. Still, a partial eclipse of the Sun was experienced over a wide region. Captured at one of its earliest moments, October's eclipsed Sun is seen just above the clouds near sunrise in this snapshot. The partially eclipsed solar disk is close to the maximum eclipse as seen from Mauna Kea Observatory Visitor Center, Island of Hawaii, planet Earth. Growing Gallery: Annular Solar Eclipse 2024 October
© Wang Letian — used with the credit NASA publishes
2023
MyCn 18: The Engraved Hourglass Planetary Nebula
Do you see the hourglass shape -- or does it see you? If you can picture it, the rings of MyCn 18 trace the outline of an hourglass -- although one with an unusual eye in its center. Either way, the sands of time are running out for the central star of this hourglass-shaped planetary nebula. With its nuclear fuel exhausted, this brief, spectacular, closing phase of a Sun-like star's life occurs as its outer layers are ejected - its core becoming a cooling, fading white dwarf. In 1995, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to make a series of images of planetary nebulae, including the one featured here. Pictured, delicate rings of colorful glowing gas (nitrogen-red, hydrogen-green, and oxygen-blue) outline the tenuous walls of the hourglass. The unprecedented sharpness of the Hubble images has revealed surprising details of the nebula ejection process that are helping to resolve the outstanding mysteries of the complex shapes and symmetries of planetary nebulas like MyCn 18.
© NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA; Processing & Copyright: Harshwardhan Pathak — used with the credit NASA publishes
2022
Jupiter's Europa from Spacecraft Juno
What mysteries might be solved by peering into this crystal ball? In this case, the ball is actually a moon of Jupiter, the crystals are ice, and the moon is not only dirty but cracked beyond repair. Nevertheless, speculation is rampant that oceans exist under Europa's fractured ice-plains that could support life. Europa, roughly the size of Earth's Moon, is pictured here in an image taken a few days ago when the Jupiter-orbiting robotic spacecraft Juno passed within 325 kilometers of its streaked and shifting surface. Underground oceans are thought likely because Europa undergoes global flexing due to its changing gravitational attraction with Jupiter during its slightly elliptical orbit, and this flexing heats the interior. Studying Juno's close-up images may further humanity's understanding not only of Europa and the early Solar System but also of the possibility that life exists elsewhere in the universe.
NASA · public domain
2021
The Holographic Principle and a Teapot
Sure, you can see the 2D rectangle of colors, but can you see deeper? Counting color patches in the featured image, you might estimate that the most information that this 2D digital image can hold is about 60 (horizontal) x 50(vertical) x 256 (possible colors) = 768,000 bits. However, the yet-unproven Holographic Principle states that, counter-intuitively, the information in a 2D panel can include all of the information in a 3D room that can be enclosed by the panel. The principle derives from the idea that the Planck length, the length scale where quantum mechanics begins to dominate classical gravity, is one side of an area that can hold only about one bit of information. The limit was first postulated by physicist Gerard 't Hooft in 1993. It can arise from generalizations from seemingly distant speculation that the information held by a black hole is determined not by its enclosed volume but by the surface area of its event horizon. The term "holographic" arises from a hologram analogy where three-dimension images are created by projecting light through a flat screen. Beware, some people staring at the featured image may not think it encodes just 768,000 bits -- nor even 2563,000 bit permutations -- rather they might claim it encodes a three-dimensional teapot.
NASA · public domain
What happened on October 3
1962
Mercury-Atlas 8, the fifth United States crewed space mission, was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, carrying astronaut Wally Schirra (pictured).
Mercury-Atlas 8 ↗
1962
Project Mercury: US astronaut Wally Schirra, in Sigma 7, is launched from Cape Canaveral for a six-orbit flight.
Project Mercury ↗
1985
The Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its maiden flight, carrying two DSCS-III Satellites on STS-51-J.
Space Shuttle Atlantis ↗
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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