Skip to content
DELTA-V

ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR

October 23 in spaceflight

24 orbital launches flew on October 23, the earliest of them in 1958, and 19 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 4 spaceflight and astronomy events on October 23. Below are the pictures NASA published on October 23 in 4 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.

Launches

ON RECORD

24MISSIONS

19 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1958, the most recent 2025.

Recorded events

IN THE RECORD

4ENTRIES

Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1906 onward.

Pictures from this date

PUBLISHED

4IMAGES

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for October 23, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.

Published on October 23

NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.

SWAN, Swan, Eagle

2025

SWAN, Swan, Eagle

Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) sports a greenish coma and fainter tail, seen against congeries of stars and dusty interstellar clouds in this 7 degree wide telescopic field of view from October 17. On that date, the new visitor to the inner Solar System obligingly posed with two other celestial birds seen toward the center of our Milky Way. Messier 16, near the bottom of the frame, and Messier 17 are also known to deep skywatchers as the Eagle and the Swan nebulae. While the comet coma's greenish glow recorded in the image is due to diatomic carbon gas fluorescing in sunlight, reddish hues seen in the nebulae, star forming regions some 5,000 light-years distant, are characteristic of ionized hydrogen gas. Comet SWAN is outbound now but still a good comet for binoculars and small telescopes that can look close to the southern horizon in the northern hemisphere's early evening skies. C/2025 R2 (SWAN) was closest to our fair planet on October 20, a mere 2.2 light-minutes away.

© Adam Block — used with the credit NASA publishes

Moon Io from Spacecraft Juno

2023

Moon Io from Spacecraft Juno

There goes another one! Volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io keep erupting. To investigate, NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft has begun a series of visits to this very strange moon. Io is about the size of Earth's moon, but because of gravitational flexing by Jupiter and other moons, Io's interior gets heated and its surface has become covered with volcanoes. The featured image is from last week's flyby, passing within 12,000 kilometers above the dangerously active world. The surface of Io is covered with sulfur and frozen sulfur dioxide, making it appear yellow, orange and brown. As hoped, Juno flew by just as a volcano was erupting -- with its faint plume visible near the top of the featured image. Studying Io's volcanoes and plumes helps humanity better understand how Jupiter's complex system of moons, rings, and auroras interact. Juno is scheduled to make two flybys of Io during the coming months that are almost 10 times closer: one in December and another in February 2024. Help Wanted: Professional-astronomer level guest writers and assistant editors for APOD

NASA · public domain

Milky Way and Zodiacal Light over Australian Pinnacles

2022

Milky Way and Zodiacal Light over Australian Pinnacles

What strange world is this? Earth. In the foreground of the featured image are the Pinnacles, unusual rock spires in Nambung National Park in Western Australia. Made of ancient sea shells (limestone), how these human-sized picturesque spires formed remains a topic of research. The picturesque panorama was taken in 2017 September. A ray of zodiacal light, sunlight reflected by dust grains orbiting between the planets in the Solar System, rises from the horizon near the image center. Arching across the top is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. The planets Jupiter and Saturn, as well as several famous stars are also visible in the background night sky.

© Jingyi Zhang — used with the credit NASA publishes

3D Bennu

2021

3D Bennu

Put on your red/blue glasses and float next to asteroid 101955 Bennu. Shaped like a spinning toy top with boulders littering its rough surface, the tiny Solar System world is about one Empire State Building (less than 500 meters) across. Frames used to construct this 3D anaglyph were taken by PolyCam on the OSIRIS_REx spacecraft on December 3, 2018 from a distance of about 80 kilometers. With a sample from the asteroid's rocky surface on board, OSIRIS_REx departed Bennu's vicinity this May and is now enroute to planet Earth. The robotic spacecraft is scheduled to return the sample to Earth in September 2023.

NASA · public domain

What happened on October 23

  1. 1906

    Alberto Santos-Dumont flew his biplane 14-bis for 50 metres (160 ft) at an altitude of about four metres (13 ft).

    Alberto Santos-Dumont ↗

  3. 1970

    Gary Gabelich sets a land speed record in a rocket-powered automobile called the Blue Flame, fueled with natural gas.

    Gary Gabelich ↗

  4. 2007

    Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-120, with Pamela Melroy becoming the second female space shuttle commander.

    Space Shuttle Discovery ↗

Every launch on October 23

24 launches

ONLINE
  1. 2025Long March 5 | TJSW-20CASCSUCCESS
  2. 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-61SpXSUCCESS
  3. 2024New Shepard | NS-27BOSUCCESS
  4. 2024Long March 2C | Yaogan 43 Group 03CASCSUCCESS
  5. 2023Long March 2D | Yaogan 39 Group 04CASCSUCCESS
  6. 2014Long March 3C/E | Chang'e 5-T1CASCSUCCESS
  7. 2012Soyuz FG | Soyuz TMA-06MRFSASUCCESS
  8. 2007Space Shuttle Discovery / OV-103 | STS-120USASUCCESS
  9. 2007Molniya-M | US-K 84PRSCSUCCESS
  10. 2006Long March 4B | Shi Jian 6C & 6DCASCSUCCESS
  11. 2006Soyuz U | Progress M-58RFSASUCCESS
  12. 1998Pegasus Hybrid | Satélite de Coleta de Dados-2 (SCD-2)OSCSUCCESS
  13. 1995Conestoga 1620 | Meteor SMSpace Services Inc.FAILURE
  14. 1991Proton | Gorizont 24CCCPSUCCESS
  15. 1985Kosmos-3M | Parus 50CCCPFAILURE
  16. 1985Molniya-M | Molniya-1T 65CCCPSUCCESS
  17. 1971Titan 24B | KH-8 33USAFSUCCESS
  18. 1970Titan 23B | KH-8 29USAFSUCCESS
  19. 1970Tsiklon-2 | I2P 4CCCPSUCCESS
  20. 1968Thor Burner 2 | DSAP-4B F2USAFSUCCESS
  21. 1964Atlas Agena D | KH-7 13USAFSUCCESS
  22. 1964Kosmos 65S3 | Strela-1 6,7,8CCCPFAILURE
  23. 1961Thor DM-21 Agena-B | Discoverer 33USAFFAILURE
  24. 1958Juno-I | BeaconABMAFAILURE

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.

FIELD KIT / LIBRARY

SPONSORED

General-audience astronomy and spaceflight — none of it a textbook.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Links here cost you nothing extra.

  • 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.

    VIEW

BROWSE opens an Amazon search, not a specific recommendation.

LINKS AMAZON.COM