Launches
ON RECORD25MISSIONS
21 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1959, the most recent 2025.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
November 4 in spaceflight
25 orbital launches flew on November 4, the earliest of them in 1959, and 21 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 1 spaceflight and astronomy event on November 4. Below are the pictures NASA published on November 4 in 5 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD1ENTRY
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 November 4, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on November 4
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2025
Comet Lemmon Beyond Lomnický Peak
Comet Lemmon has been putting on a show for cameras around the globe. Passing nearest to Earth in late October, the photogenic comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) sprouted two long and picturesque tails: a blue ion tail and a white dust tail. The ion tail is pushed away from the coma by the ever-present but ever-changing solar wind, at one point extending over 20 times the diameter of the full Moon -- as captured in this long-duration exposure. The shorter and wider dust tail is pushed away from the coma and shines by reflecting sunlight. The featured picture, captured two weeks ago, framed the comet behind Lomnický Peak of the High Tatra Mountains, home to the Slovakian Lomnický Stit Observatory. Comet Lemmon is now fading as it heads away from planet Earth. The huge shedding snowball will round the Sun later this week.
© Robert Barsa — used with the credit NASA publishes
2024
M42: The Great Nebula in Orion
The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away. In the featured deep image in assigned colors highlighted by emission in oxygen and hydrogen, wisps and sheets of dust and gas are particularly evident. The Great Nebula in Orion can be found with the unaided eye near the easily identifiable belt of three stars in the popular constellation Orion. In addition to housing a bright open cluster of stars known as the Trapezium, the Orion Nebula contains many stellar nurseries. These nurseries contain much hydrogen gas, hot young stars, proplyds, and stellar jets spewing material at high speeds. Also known as M42, the Orion Nebula spans about 40 light years and is located in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun.
© Fényes Lóránd — used with the credit NASA publishes
2023
Dinkinesh Moonrise
Last Wednesday the voyaging Lucy spacecraft encountered its first asteroid, 152830 Dinkinesh, and discovered the inner-main belt asteroid has a moon. From a distance of just over 400 kilometers, Lucy's Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager captured this close-up of the binary system during a flyby at 4.5 kilometer per second or around 10,000 miles per hour. A marvelous world, Dinkinesh itself is small, less than 800 meters (about 0.5 miles) across at its widest. Its satellite is seen from the spacecraft's perspective to emerge from behind the primary asteroid. The asteroid moon is estimated to be only about 220 meters wide.
NASA · public domain
2022
InSight's Final Selfie
The Mars InSight lander returned its first image from the Red Planet's flat, equatorial Elysium Planitia after a successful touchdown on November 26, 2018. The history making mission to explore the martian Interior using Seismic investigations, geodesy, and heat transport has been operating for over 1,400 martian days or sols. In that time the InSight mission has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes and recorded data from Mars-shaking meteoroid impacts, observing how the seismic waves travel to provide a glimpse inside Mars. Analyzing the archive of data collected is expected to yield discoveries for decades. But InSight's final operational sol is likely not far off. The reason is evident in this selfie recorded earlier this year showing its deck and large, 2-meter-wide solar panels covered with dust. Kicked up by martian winds the dust continues to accumulate and drastically reduce the power that can be generated by InSight's solar panels.
NASA · public domain
2021
NGC 147 and NGC 185
Dwarf galaxies NGC 147 (left) and NGC 185 stand side by side in this sharp telescopic portrait. The two are not-often-imaged satellites of M31, the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away. Their separation on the sky, less than one degree across a pretty field of view, translates to only about 35 thousand light-years at Andromeda's distance, but Andromeda itself is found well outside this frame. Brighter and more famous satellite galaxies of Andromeda, M32 and M110, are seen closer to the great spiral. NGC 147 and NGC 185 have been identified as binary galaxies, forming a gravitationally stable binary system. But recently discovered faint dwarf galaxy Cassiopeia II also seems to be part of their system, forming a gravitationally bound group within Andromeda's intriguing population of small satellite galaxies.
© Dan Bartlett — used with the credit NASA publishes
What happened on November 4
1942
World War II: Disobeying a direct order by Adolf Hitler, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel begins a retreat of his forces after a costly defeat during the Second Battle of El Alamein. The retreat would ultimately last five months.
Adolf Hitler ↗
Every launch on November 4
25 launches
ONLINE
- 2025Ariane 62 | Sentinel-1DASASUCCESS
- 2024Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat-M | Ionosfera-M 1 & 2RFSASUCCESS
- 2024H3-22 | DSN 3 (Kirameki 3)MHISUCCESS
- 2023Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-26SpXSUCCESS
- 2022Electron | Catch Me If You Can (MATS)RLSUCCESS
- 2019Long March 3B/E | Beidou-3 IGSO-3CASCSUCCESS
- 2015SPARK | ORS-4SNLFAILURE
- 2011Proton-M Briz-M | 3 x Glonass-M (Kosmos 2475, Kosmos 2476, Kosmos 2477)KhSCSUCCESS
- 2010Long March 4C | Feng Yun-3BCASCSUCCESS
- 2006Delta IV M | DMSP F-17USAFSUCCESS
- 1998Proton-K/DM-2M | PAS 8KhSCSUCCESS
- 1996Pegasus XL | High Energy Transient Explorer (HETE) & Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-B (SAC-B)OSCFAILURE
- 1995Delta II | RadarsatUSAFSUCCESS
- 1994Zenit-2 | Resurs-O1RFSASUCCESS
- 1986Soyuz U | Zenit-8 40CCCPSUCCESS
- 1981Proton-K/D-1 | Venera-14CCCPSUCCESS
- 1980Tsiklon-2 | US-P 9CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Voskhod | Zenit-4MK 52CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Kosmos-3M | Parus 4CCCPSUCCESS
- 1974Soyuz 11A511M | Zenit-4MT 7CCCPSUCCESS
- 1969Kosmos 11K63 | DS-P1-I 6CCCPSUCCESS
- 1965Kosmos 11K63 | DS-U2-V 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1964Thor SLV-2A Agena D | P-698BK Group 3-D 1USAFSUCCESS
- 1962Molniya 8K78 | Mars 2aCCCPFAILURE
- 1959Little Joe | LJ-1ANASAPARTIAL
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.
- VIEW
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.
BROWSE opens an Amazon search, not a specific recommendation.
LINKS AMAZON.COM