Skip to content
DELTA-V

ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR

November 3 in spaceflight

21 orbital launches flew on November 3, the earliest of them in 1957, and 20 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 5 spaceflight and astronomy events on November 3. Below are the pictures NASA published on November 3 in 5 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.

Launches

ON RECORD

21MISSIONS

20 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1957, the most recent 2025.

Recorded events

IN THE RECORD

5ENTRIES

Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1957 onward.

Pictures from this date

PUBLISHED

5IMAGES

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for November 3, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.

Published on November 3

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

A Double Helix Lunar Eclipse

2025

A Double Helix Lunar Eclipse

The image was timed to capture a total lunar eclipse -- but it came with quite a twist. First, the eclipse: the fully Earth-shadowed Moon is visible as the orange orb near the top. The eclipsed Moon's orange color is caused by a slight amount of red light scattered first by Earth's atmosphere, adding a color like a setting Sun. Now, the twist: one of the apparent double helix bands is the Milky Way, the central disk of our home galaxy. The second band is zodiacal light, sunlight scattered by dust in our Solar System. The reason they cross is because the plane where dust orbits our Sun is tilted relative to the plane where stars orbit our Galaxy. This well-known tilt is shown dramatically in the featured wide-angle Mercator-projected picture, spanning from horizon to horizon, captured in early September from Mingantu Observing Station in Inner Mongolia, China. 

© Chunlin Liu — used with the credit NASA publishes

Jupiter Abyss

2024

Jupiter Abyss

What's that black spot on Jupiter? No one is sure. During one pass of NASA's Juno over Jupiter, the robotic spacecraft imaged an usually dark cloud feature informally dubbed the Abyss. Surrounding cloud patterns show the Abyss to be at the center of a vortex. Since dark features on Jupiter's atmosphere tend to run deeper than light features, the Abyss may really be the deep hole that it appears -- but without more evidence that remains conjecture. The Abyss is surrounded by a complex of meandering clouds and other swirling storm systems, some of which are topped by light colored, high-altitude clouds. The featured image was captured in 2019 while Juno passed only about 15,000 kilometers above Jupiter's cloud tops. The next close pass of Juno near Jupiter will be in about three weeks.

NASA · public domain

Jupiter by Moonlight

2023

Jupiter by Moonlight

That bright beacon you've seen rising in the east just after sunset is Jupiter. Climbing high in midnight skies, our Solar System's ruling gas giant was at its 2023 opposition, opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky, on November 2. But only a few days earlier, on October 28, the Moon was at its own opposition. Then both Full Moon and Jupiter could share this telephoto field of view. The celestial scene is composed from two exposures, one long and one short, blended to record bright planet and even brighter Moon during that evening's partial lunar eclipse. Moonlight shining through the thin, high clouds over northern Italy creates the colorful iridescence and lunar corona. Look closely and you'll also spot some of Jupiter's Galilean moons.

© Giorgia Hofer — used with the credit NASA publishes

M33: The Triangulum Galaxy

2022

M33: The Triangulum Galaxy

The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy. M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way. About 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, M33 is itself thought to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy and astronomers in these two galaxies would likely have spectacular views of each other's grand spiral star systems. As for the view from the Milky Way, this sharp image combines data from telescopes on and around planet Earth to show off M33's blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along the galaxy's loosely wound spiral arms. In fact, the cavernous NGC 604 is the brightest star forming region, seen here at about the 1 o'clock position from the galaxy center. Like M31, M33's population of well-measured variable stars have helped make this nearby spiral a cosmic yardstick for establishing the distance scale of the Universe.

© Robert Gendler — used with the credit NASA publishes

The Horsehead and Flame Nebulas

2021

The Horsehead and Flame Nebulas

The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the dark indentation to the orange emission nebula at the far right of the featured picture. The horse-head feature is dark because it is really an opaque dust cloud that lies in front of the bright emission nebula. Like clouds in Earth's atmosphere, this cosmic cloud has assumed a recognizable shape by chance. After many thousands of years, the internal motions of the cloud will surely alter its appearance. The emission nebula's orange color is caused by electrons recombining with protons to form hydrogen atoms. Toward the lower left of the image is the Flame Nebula, an orange-tinged nebula that also contains intricate filaments of dark dust. Two prominent reflection nebulas are visible: round IC 432 on the far left, and blue NGC 2023 just to the lower left of the Horsehead nebula. Each glows primarily by reflecting the light of their central star. Discovery + Outreach: Graduate student research position open for APOD

© Wissam Ayoub — used with the credit NASA publishes

DELTA-V // BROWSER

Play it right here

LAUNCH

What happened on November 3

  1. 1957

    The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2, carrying the space dog Laika as the first living creature to enter orbit around Earth.

    Sputnik 2 ↗

  3. 1973

    Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury. On March 29, 1974, it becomes the first space probe to reach that planet.

    Mariner program ↗

  4. 1986

    The Compact of Free Association becomes law, granting the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands independence from the United States.

    Compact of Free Association ↗

Every launch on November 3

21 launches

ONLINE
  1. 2025Long March 7A | Yaogan 46CASCSUCCESS
  2. 2023Long March 7A | TJSW-10CASCSUCCESS
  3. 2022Falcon 9 Block 5 | Hotbird 13GSpXSUCCESS
  4. 2021Long March 2C/YZ-1S | Yaogan-32-02CASCSUCCESS
  5. 2019Long March 4B | Gaofen-7 & othersCASCSUCCESS
  6. 2018Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat-M | Glonass-M No. 57 (Kosmos 2529)VKSSUCCESS
  7. 2016Long March 5 / YZ-2 | Shijian 17CASCSUCCESS
  8. 2016SpaceShipTwo | VSS Unity CC03VGPARTIAL
  9. 2015Long March 3B/E | Zhongxing-2C (Chinasat-2C)CASCSUCCESS
  10. 2003Long March 2D | Fanhui Shi Weixing (18)CASCSUCCESS
  11. 1994Space Shuttle Atlantis / OV-104 | STS-66LSOCSUCCESS
  12. 1990Proton | Gorizont 21CCCPSUCCESS
  13. 1981Soyuz U | Yantar-2K 22CCCPSUCCESS
  14. 1973Atlas SLV-3D Centaur | Mariner 10USAFSUCCESS
  15. 1972Kosmos-3M | Tselina-O 16CCCPSUCCESS
  16. 1971Titan IIIC | DSCS-2 1 & 2USAFSUCCESS
  17. 1968Thorad SLV-2G Agena D | KH-4B 5USAFSUCCESS
  18. 1967Voskhod | Zenit-4 36CCCPSUCCESS
  19. 1966Titan IIIC | Gemini BUSAFSUCCESS
  20. 1960Juno II | Explorer 8NASASUCCESS
  21. 1957Sputnik 8K74PS | Sputnik 2CCCPSUCCESS

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