Launches
ON RECORD10MISSIONS
10 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1959, the most recent 2024.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
November 7 in spaceflight
10 orbital launches flew on November 7, the earliest of them in 1959, and 10 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 4 spaceflight and astronomy events on November 7. Below are the pictures NASA published on November 7 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 1492 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED5IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for November 7, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on November 7
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2025
A Dark Seahorse in Cepheus
Spanning light-years, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula floats in silhouette against a rich background of stars and glowing hydrogen gas. Seen toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus, the dusty, dark nebula is part of a Milky Way molecular cloud some 1,200 light-years distant. It is also listed as Barnard 150 (B150), one of 182 dark markings of the sky cataloged in the early 20th century by astronomer E. E. Barnard. Packs of low mass stars are forming within, but their collapsing cores are only visible at long infrared wavelengths. Still, the luminous depths of the Milky Way in Cepheus add to this stunning galactic skyscape.
© Jordi Jofre — used with the credit NASA publishes
2024
Shell Galaxies in Pisces
This spectacular intergalactic skyscape features Arp 227, a curious system of galaxies from the 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. Some 100 million light-years distant within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces, Arp 227 consists of the two galaxies prominent above and left of center, the shell galaxy NGC 474 and its blue, spiral-armed neighbor NGC 470. The readily apparent shells and star streams of NGC 474 are likely tidal features originating from the accretion of another smaller galaxy during close gravitational encounters that began over a billion years ago. The large galaxy on the bottom righthand side of the deep image, NGC 467, appears to be surrounded by faint shells and streams too, evidence of another merging galaxy system. Intriguing background galaxies are scattered around the field that also includes spiky foreground stars. Of course, those stars lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. The telescopic field of view spans 25 arc minutes or just under 1/2 degree on the sky.
© George Williams — used with the credit NASA publishes
2023
A Martian Dust Devil Spins By
It moved across the surface of Mars -- what was it? A dust devil. Such spinning columns of rising air are heated by the warm surface and are also common in warm and dry areas on planet Earth. Typically lasting only a few minutes, dust devils become visible as they pick up loose red-colored dust, leaving the darker and heavier sand beneath intact. Dust devils not only look cool -- they can leave visible trails, and have been credited with unexpected cleanings of the surfaces of solar panels. The images in the featured AI-interpolated video were captured in early August by the Perseverance rover currently searching for signs of ancient life in Jezero Crater. The six-second time-lapse video encapsulates a real duration of just over one minute. Visible in the distance, the spinning dust devil was estimated to be passing by at about 20 kilometers per hour and extend up about 2 kilometers high. Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)
NASA · public domain
2022
A Total Lunar Eclipse Over Tajikistan
If the full Moon suddenly faded, what would you see? The answer was recorded in a dramatic time lapse video taken during the total lunar eclipse in 2011 from Tajikistan. During a total lunar eclipse, the Earth moves between the Moon and the Sun, causing the moon to fade dramatically. The Moon never gets completely dark, though, since the Earth's atmosphere refracts some light. As the featured video begins, the scene may appear to be daytime and sunlit, but actually it is a nighttime and lit by the glow of the full Moon. As the Moon becomes eclipsed and fades, background stars become visible and here can be seen reflected in a lake. Most spectacularly, the sky surrounding the eclipsed moon suddenly appears to be full of stars and highlighted by the busy plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. The sequence repeats with a closer view, and the final image shows the placement of the eclipsed Moon near the Eagle, Swan, Trifid, and Lagoon nebulas. Nearly two hours after the eclipse started, the moon emerged from the Earth's shadow and its bright full glare again dominated the sky. Later today or tomorrow, depending on your location relative to the International Date Line, a new total lunar eclipse will take place -- with totality being primarily visible over northeastern Asia and northwestern North America. Total Lunar Eclipse of November 2022: What you need to know.
© Jean-Luc Dauvergne (Ciel et Espace); Music: Valère Leroy & Sophie Huet (Space-Music) — used with the credit NASA publishes
2021
The Cat's Eye Nebula in Optical and X-ray
To some it looks like a cat's eye. To others, perhaps like a giant cosmic conch shell. It is actually one of brightest and most highly detailed planetary nebula known, composed of gas expelled in the brief yet glorious phase near the end of life of a Sun-like star. This nebula's dying central star may have produced the outer circular concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. The formation of the beautiful, complex-yet-symmetric inner structures, however, is not well understood. The featured image is a composite of a digitally sharpened Hubble Space Telescope image with X-ray light captured by the orbiting Chandra Observatory. The exquisite floating space statue spans over half a light-year across. Of course, gazing into this Cat's Eye, humanity may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years. APOD in world languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Beijing), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Dutch, French, French (Canada), German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Montenegrin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Taiwanese, Turkish, Turkish, and Ukrainian
NASA · public domain
What happened on November 7
1492
The Ensisheim meteorite, the oldest meteorite with a known date of impact, strikes the Earth in a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim, Alsace, France.
Ensisheim meteorite ↗
1910
The first air freight shipment (from Dayton, Ohio, to Columbus, Ohio) is undertaken by the Wright brothers and department store owner Max Morehouse.
Air cargo ↗
1996
NASA launched the Mars Global Surveyor from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
NASA ↗
Every launch on November 7
10 launches
ONLINE
- 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-77SpXSUCCESS
- 2022Antares 230+ | Cygnus CRS-2 NG-18 (S.S. Sally Ride)NGSSSUCCESS
- 2020PSLV-DL | EOS-01 (RISAT-2BR2)ISROSUCCESS
- 2020Ceres-1 | Tianqi-11GESUCCESS
- 2018Soyuz STB/Fregat-MT | MetOp-CASASUCCESS
- 2013Soyuz FG | Soyuz TMA-11MRFSASUCCESS
- 1996Delta II | Mars Global SurveyorUSAFSUCCESS
- 1967Atlas SLV-3C Centaur | Surveyor 6USAFSUCCESS
- 1964Nike Cajun | Trailblazer PelletNASASUCCESS
- 1959Thor Agena A | Discoverer 7USAFSUCCESS
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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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.
BROWSE opens an Amazon search, not a specific recommendation.
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