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October 31 in spaceflight

27 orbital launches flew on October 31, the earliest of them in 1962, and 26 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 3 spaceflight and astronomy events on October 31. Below are the pictures NASA published on October 31 in 5 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.

Launches

ON RECORD

27MISSIONS

26 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1962, the most recent 2025.

Recorded events

IN THE RECORD

3ENTRIES

Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 2000 onward.

Pictures from this date

PUBLISHED

5IMAGES

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for October 31, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.

Published on October 31

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

Ghosts in Cassiopeia

2025

Ghosts in Cassiopeia

Halloween is an astronomy holiday and spooky shapes always seem to lurk in planet Earth's night skies. In fact, near the center of this telescopic view toward the constellation Cassiopeia these swept-back interstellar clouds IC 59 (left) and IC 63 look ghostly on a cosmic scale. About 600 light-years distant, the clouds aren't actually ghosts. They are slowly disappearing though, under the influence of energetic radiation from hot, luminous star gamma Cas. The brightest bluish star in the frame, Gamma Cas is physically located only 3 to 4 light-years from the nebulae. Slightly closer to gamma Cas, IC 63 is dominated by red H-alpha light emitted as hydrogen atoms ionized by the hot star's ultraviolet radiation recombine with electrons. Farther from the star IC 59 also shows H-alpha emission, and both nebulae shine with the characteristic blue tint of dust reflected star light. The field of view spans about 2 degrees or 20 light-years at the estimated distance of the interstellar apparitions.

© Alex Rodriguez — used with the credit NASA publishes

Rigel and the Witch Head Nebula

2024

Rigel and the Witch Head Nebula

By starlight, this eerie visage shines in the dark with a crooked profile evoking its popular name, the Witch Head Nebula. In fact, this entrancing telescopic portrait gives the impression that a witch has fixed her gaze on Orion's bright supergiant star Rigel. More formally known as IC 2118, the Witch Head Nebula spans about 50 light-years and is composed of interstellar dust grains reflecting Rigel's starlight. The color of the Witch Head Nebula is caused not only by Rigel's intense blue light, but because the dust grains scatter blue light more efficiently than red. The same physical process causes Earth's daytime sky to appear blue, although the scatterers in Earth's atmosphere are molecules of nitrogen and oxygen. Rigel and this dusty cosmic crone are about 800 light-years away. You may still see a few witches in your neighborhood tonight though, so have a safe and Happy Halloween!

© Simone Curzi — used with the credit NASA publishes

Halloween and the Wizard Nebula

2023

Halloween and the Wizard Nebula

Halloween's origin is ancient and astronomical. Since the fifth century BC, Halloween has been celebrated as a cross-quarter day, a day halfway between an equinox (equal day / equal night) and a solstice (minimum day / maximum night in the northern hemisphere). With a modern calendar however, even though Halloween occurs today, the real cross-quarter day will occur next week. Another cross-quarter day is Groundhog Day. Halloween's modern celebration retains historic roots in dressing to scare away the spirits of the dead. Perhaps a fitting tribute to this ancient holiday is this closeup view of the Wizard Nebula (NGC 7380). Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional ancient sorcerer. Although the nebula may last only a few million years, some of the stars being conjured from the gas by the great gravitational powers may outlive our Sun.

© Richard McInnis — used with the credit NASA publishes

LDN 43: The Cosmic Bat Nebula

2022

LDN 43: The Cosmic Bat Nebula

What is the most spook-tacular nebula in the galaxy? One contender is LDN 43, which bears an astonishing resemblance to a vast cosmic bat flying amongst the stars on a dark Halloween night. Located about 1400 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, this molecular cloud is dense enough to block light not only from background stars, but from wisps of gas lit up by the nearby reflection nebula LBN 7. Far from being a harbinger of death, this 12-light year-long filament of gas and dust is actually a stellar nursery. Glowing with eerie light, the bat is lit up from inside by dense gaseous knots that have just formed young stars. Celebrate: Halloween With NASA Online

© Mark Hanson and Mike Selby; Text: Michelle Thaller (NASA's GSFC) — used with the credit NASA publishes

Dark Matter in a Simulated Universe

2021

Dark Matter in a Simulated Universe

Is our universe haunted? It might look that way on this dark matter map. The gravity of unseen dark matter is the leading explanation for why galaxies rotate so fast, why galaxies orbit clusters so fast, why gravitational lenses so strongly deflect light, and why visible matter is distributed as it is both in the local universe and on the cosmic microwave background. The featured image from the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium Space Show Dark Universe highlights one example of how pervasive dark matter might haunt our universe. In this frame from a detailed computer simulation, complex filaments of dark matter, shown in black, are strewn about the universe like spider webs, while the relatively rare clumps of familiar baryonic matter are colored orange. These simulations are good statistical matches to astronomical observations. In what is perhaps a scarier turn of events, dark matter -- although quite strange and in an unknown form -- is no longer thought to be the strangest source of gravity in the universe. That honor now falls to dark energy, a more uniform source of repulsive gravity that seems to now dominate the expansion of the entire universe. Not only Halloween: Today is Dark Matter Day.

© Tom Abel & Ralf Kaehler (KIPAC, SLAC), AMNH — used with the credit NASA publishes

What happened on October 31

  1. 2000

    Soyuz TM-31 launches, carrying the first resident crew to the International Space Station. The ISS has been crewed continuously since then.

    Soyuz TM-31 ↗

  2. 2005

    The discovery of the Plutonian moons Nix and Hydra, based on photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope nearly five months prior, was announced.

    Moons of Pluto ↗

  3. 2014

    During a test flight, the VSS Enterprise, a Virgin Galactic experimental spaceflight test vehicle, suffers a catastrophic in-flight breakup and crashes in the Mojave Desert, California.

    VSS Enterprise ↗

Every launch on October 31

27 launches

ONLINE
  1. 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 11-23SpXSUCCESS
  2. 2025Long March 2F/G | Shenzhou 21CASCSUCCESS
  3. 2024Soyuz 2.1a | Kosmos 2579 (Bars-M No. 6)VKSSUCCESS
  4. 2023Long March 6A | Tianhui 5CASCSUCCESS
  5. 2022Long March 5B | MengtianCASCSUCCESS
  6. 2017Minotaur-C (Taurus XL) | 6 x SkySat & 4 x DoveOASUCCESS
  7. 2015Atlas V 401 | GPS IIF-11 (USA-265)ULASUCCESS
  8. 2014SpaceShipTwo | VSS Enterprise PF04VGFAILURE
  9. 2012Soyuz-U | Progress M-17M (49P)RFSASUCCESS
  10. 2011Long March 2F/G | Shenzhou-8 & Shenzhou-8-GCCASCSUCCESS
  11. 2010Long March 3C | Compass-G4CASCSUCCESS
  12. 2000Soyuz-U | Soyuz TM-31RFSASUCCESS
  13. 1995Zenit-2 | Tselina-2 17RFSASUCCESS
  14. 1994Proton | ElektroKhSCSUCCESS
  15. 1986Soyuz U | Resurs-F1 17F40 61L 3CCCPSUCCESS
  16. 1984Tsiklon-2 | US-A 25CCCPSUCCESS
  17. 1982Soyuz U | Progress 16CCCPSUCCESS
  18. 1981Molniya-M | US-K 23CCCPSUCCESS
  19. 1981Titan IIIC | Vortex 10USAFSUCCESS
  20. 1980Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 28CCCPSUCCESS
  21. 1980Atlas SLV-3D Centaur | FLTSATCOM 4USAFSUCCESS
  22. 1979Vostok 8A92M | Meteor-2 5CCCPSUCCESS
  23. 1974Kosmos-3M | DS-U2-IK 5CCCPSUCCESS
  24. 1973Soyuz U | Bion 1CCCPSUCCESS
  25. 1972Voskhod | Zenit-4MK 9CCCPSUCCESS
  26. 1968Voskhod | Zenit-4M 1CCCPSUCCESS
  27. 1962Thor DM-21 Ablestar | ANNA 1BUSAFSUCCESS

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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