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November 23 in spaceflight

22 orbital launches flew on November 23, the earliest of them in 1960, and 20 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 5 spaceflight and astronomy events on November 23. Below are the pictures NASA published on November 23 in 5 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.

Launches

ON RECORD

22MISSIONS

20 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1960, the most recent 2025.

Recorded events

IN THE RECORD

5ENTRIES

Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1924 onward.

Pictures from this date

PUBLISHED

5IMAGES

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

Published on November 23

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

The Observable Universe

2025

The Observable Universe

How far can you see? Everything you can see, and everything you could possibly see, right now, assuming your eyes could detect all types of radiations around you -- is the observable universe. In light, the farthest we can see comes from the cosmic microwave background, a time 13.8 billion years ago when the universe was opaque like thick fog. Some neutrinos and gravitational waves that surround us come from even farther out, but humanity does not yet have the technology to detect them. The featured image illustrates the observable universe on an increasingly compact scale, with the Earth and Sun at the center surrounded by our Solar System, nearby stars, nearby galaxies, distant galaxies, filaments of early matter, and the cosmic microwave background. Cosmologists typically assume that our observable universe is just the nearby part of a greater entity known as "the universe" where the same physics applies. However, there are several lines of popular but speculative reasoning that assert that even our universe is part of a greater multiverse where either different physical constants occur, different physical laws apply, higher dimensions operate, or slightly different-by-chance versions of our standard universe exist. Explore the Observable Universe: Random APOD Generator

NASA · public domain

Interplanetary Earth

2024

Interplanetary Earth

In an interplanetary first, on July 19, 2013 Earth was photographed on the same day from two other worlds of the Solar System, innermost planet Mercury and ringed gas giant Saturn. Pictured on the left, Earth is the pale blue dot just below the rings of Saturn, as captured by the robotic Cassini spacecraft then orbiting the outermost gas giant. On that same day people across planet Earth snapped many of their own pictures of Saturn. On the right, the Earth-Moon system is seen against the dark background of space as captured by the sunward MESSENGER spacecraft, then in Mercury orbit. MESSENGER took its image as part of a search for small natural satellites of Mercury, moons that would be expected to be quite dim. In the MESSENGER image, the brighter Earth and Moon are both overexposed and shine brightly with reflected sunlight. Destined not to return to their home world, both Cassini and MESSENGER have since retired from their missions of Solar System exploration.

NASA · public domain

Along the Taurus Molecular Cloud

2023

Along the Taurus Molecular Cloud

The cosmic brush of star formation composed this interstellar canvas of emission, dust, and dark nebulae. A 5 degree wide telescopic mosaic, it frames a region found north of bright star Aldebaran on the sky, at an inner wall of the local bubble along the Taurus molecular cloud. At lower left, emission cataloged as Sh2-239 shows signs of embedded young stellar objects. The region's Herbig-Haro objects, nebulosities associated with newly born stars, are marked by tell-tale reddish jets of shocked hydrogen gas. Above and right T Tauri, the prototype of the class of T Tauri variable stars, is next to a yellowish nebula historically known as Hind's Variable Nebula (NGC 1555). T Tauri stars are now generally recognized as young, less than a few million years old, sun-like stars still in the early stages of formation.

© Yuexiao Shen — used with the credit NASA publishes

Earthset from Orion

2022

Earthset from Orion

ght billion people are about to disappear in this snapshot from space. Taken on November 21, the sixth day of the Artemis 1 mission, their home world is setting behind the Moon's bright edge as viewed by an external camera on the outbound Orion spacecraft. The Orion was headed for a powered flyby that took it to within 130 kilometers of the lunar surface. Velocity gained in the flyby maneuver will be used to reach a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. That orbit is considered distant because it's another 92,000 kilometers beyond the Moon, and retrograde because the spacecraft will orbit in the opposite direction of the Moon's orbit around planet Earth. Orion will enter its distant retrograde orbit on Friday, November 25. Swinging around the Moon, Orion will reach a maximum distance (just over 400,000 kilometers) from Earth on Monday November 28 exceeding a record set by Apollo 13 for most distant spacecraft designed for human space exploration.

NASA · public domain

The Sun in X-rays from NuSTAR

2021

The Sun in X-rays from NuSTAR

Why are the regions above sunspots so hot? Sunspots themselves are a bit cooler than the surrounding solar surface because the magnetic fields that create them reduce convective heating. It is therefore unusual that regions overhead -- even much higher up in the Sun's corona -- can be hundreds of times hotter. To help find the cause, NASA directed the Earth-orbiting Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) satellite to point its very sensitive X-ray telescope at the Sun. Featured here is the Sun in ultraviolet light, shown in a red hue as taken by the orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Superimposed in false-colored green and blue is emission above sunspots detected by NuSTAR in different bands of high-energy X-rays, highlighting regions of extremely high temperature. Clues about the Sun's atmospheric heating mechanisms come from NuSTAR images like this and shed light on solar nanoflares and microflares as brief bursts of energy that may drive the unusual heating.

NASA · public domain

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What happened on November 23

  1. 1924

    The New York Times published evidence from Edwin Hubble (pictured) stating that the Andromeda Nebula, previously believed to be part of the Milky Way, is in fact another galaxy.

    The New York Times ↗

  2. 1924

    Edwin Hubble's discovery, that the Andromeda "nebula" is actually another island galaxy far outside our own Milky Way, is first published in The New York Times.

    Edwin Hubble ↗

  3. 1972

    The Soviet Union makes its final attempt at launching the N1 rocket.

    N1 (rocket) ↗

  4. 2002

    Space Shuttle Endeavour launches on STS-113 to the International Space Station carrying the Expedition 6 crew and the P1 truss.

    Space Shuttle Endeavour ↗

  5. 2015

    Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle became the first rocket to successfully fly to space and then return to Earth for a controlled, vertical landing.

    Blue Origin ↗

Every launch on November 23

22 launches

ONLINE
  1. 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 11-30SpXSUCCESS
  2. 2023Long March 2D/YZ-3 | 3 x SatNet test satellitesCASCSUCCESS
  3. 2022Falcon 9 Block 5 | Eutelsat 10BSpXSUCCESS
  4. 2020Long March 5 | Chang'e 5CASCSUCCESS
  5. 2019Long March 3B/YZ-1 | Beidou-3 M21 & M22CASCSUCCESS
  6. 2015New Shepard | NS-2BOSUCCESS
  7. 2014Soyuz FG | Soyuz TMA-15MRFSASUCCESS
  8. 2009Atlas V 431 | Intelsat 14ULASUCCESS
  9. 1999Atlas IIA | UHF F/O F10LMTSUCCESS
  10. 1990Proton | Gorizont 22CCCPSUCCESS
  11. 1990Molniya-M | Molniya-1T 79CCCPSUCCESS
  12. 1989Molniya-M | US-K 61CCCPSUCCESS
  13. 1989Space Shuttle Discovery / OV-103 | STS-33LSOCSUCCESS
  14. 1988Zenit-2 | Tselina-2 6CCCPSUCCESS
  15. 1983Molniya-M | Molniya-1K 59CCCPSUCCESS
  16. 1977Delta 2914 | Meteosat 1USAFSUCCESS
  17. 1976Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 1CCCPSUCCESS
  18. 1974Delta 2313 | Skynet IIBUSAFSUCCESS
  19. 1972N1 | Soyuz 7K-LOK No.2CCCPFAILURE
  20. 1967Kosmos-3M | Zaliv 1CCCPSUCCESS
  21. 1965Molniya 8K78 | Venera-4aCCCPFAILURE
  22. 1960Thor Delta | Tiros 2USAFSUCCESS

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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    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.

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