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November 30 in spaceflight

22 orbital launches flew on November 30, the earliest of them in 1960, and 20 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 4 spaceflight and astronomy events on November 30. Below are the pictures NASA published on November 30 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

4ENTRIES

Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1954 onward.

Pictures from this date

PUBLISHED

5IMAGES

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for November 30, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.

Published on November 30

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

The Surface of Titan from Huygens

2025

The Surface of Titan from Huygens

If you could stand on Titan -- what would you see? The featured color view from Titan gazes across an unfamiliar and distant landscape on Saturn's largest moon. The scene was recorded by ESA's Huygens probe in 2005 after a 2.5-hour descent through a thick atmosphere of nitrogen laced with methane. Bathed in an eerie orange light at ground level, rocks strewn about the scene could well be composed of water and hydrocarbons frozen solid at an inhospitable temperature of negative 179 degrees C. The large light-toned rock below and left of center is only about 15 centimeters across and lies 85 centimeters away. The saucer-shaped spacecraft is believed to have penetrated about 15 centimeters into a place on Titan's surface that had the consistency of wet sand or clay. Huygen's batteries enabled the probe to take and transmit data for more than 90 minutes after landing. Titan's bizarre chemical environment may bear similarities to planet Earth's before life evolved.

NASA · public domain

Winter and Summer on a Little Planet

2024

Winter and Summer on a Little Planet

Winter and summer appear to come on a single night to this stunning little planet. It's planet Earth of course. The digitally mapped, nadir centered panorama covers 360x180 degrees and is composed of frames recorded during January and July from the Col du Galibier in the French Alps. Stars and nebulae of the northern winter (bottom) and summer Milky Way form the complete arcs traversing the rugged, curved horizon. Cars driving along on the road during a summer night illuminate the 2,642 meter high mountain pass, but snow makes access difficult during winter months except by serious ski touring. Cycling fans will recognize the Col du Galibier as one of the most famous climbs in planet Earth's Tour de France.

© Camille Niel — used with the credit NASA publishes

Artemis 1: Flight Day 13

2023

Artemis 1: Flight Day 13

On flight day 13 (November 28, 2022) of the Artemis I mission, the Orion spacecraft reached its maximum distance from its home world. Over 430,000 kilometers from Earth in a distant retrograde orbit, Orion surpassed the record for most distant spacecraft designed to carry humans. That record was previously set in 1970 during the Apollo 13 mission to the Moon. Both Earth and Moon are in the same field of view in this video frame from Orion on Artemis I mission flight day 13. The planet and its large natural satellite even appear about the same apparent size from the uncrewed spacecraft's perspective.

NASA · public domain

The Light, the Dark, and the Dusty

2022

The Light, the Dark, and the Dusty

This colorful skyscape spans about four full moons across nebula rich starfields along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy in the royal northern constellation Cepheus. Near the edge of the region's massive molecular cloud some 2,400 light-years away, bright reddish emission region Sharpless (Sh) 155 is at the center of the frame, also known as the Cave Nebula. About 10 light-years across the cosmic cave's bright walls of gas are ionized by ultraviolet light from the hot young stars around it. Dusty reflection nebulae, like vdB 155 to the right, and dense obscuring clouds of dust also abound on the interstellar canvas. Astronomical explorations have revealed other dramatic signs of star formation, including the bright reddish fleck of Herbig-Haro (HH) 168. Below and right of center, the Herbig-Haro object emission is generated by energetic jets from a newborn star.

© Anthony Quintile — used with the credit NASA publishes

In Motion: Uranus and Moons

2021

In Motion: Uranus and Moons

What's that moving across the sky? A planet just a bit too faint to see with the unaided eye: Uranus. The gas giant out past Saturn was tracked earlier this month near opposition -- when it was closest to Earth and at its brightest. The featured video captured by the Bayfordbury Observatory in Hertfordshire, UK is a four-hour time-lapse showing Uranus with its four largest moons in tow: Titania, Oberon, Umbriel and Ariel. Uranus' apparent motion past background stars is really dominated by Earth's own orbital motion around our Sun. The cross seen centered on Uranus is called a diffraction spike and is caused by light diffracting around the four arms that hold one of the telescope's mirrors in place. The rotation of the diffraction spikes is not caused by the rotation of Uranus but, essentially, by the rotation of the Earth. During the next few months Uranus itself will be visible with binoculars, but, as always, to see its moons will require a telescope.

NASA · public domain

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What happened on November 30

  1. 1954

    A meteorite crashed through a roof in Sylacauga, Alabama, and hit a sleeping woman in the first verified case of a human being injured by an extraterrestrial object.

    Sylacauga (meteorite) ↗

  2. 1954

    In Sylacauga, Alabama, United States, the Hodges meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap; this is the only documented case in the Western Hemisphere of a human being hit by a rock from space.

    Sylacauga, Alabama ↗

  3. 2000

    NASA launches STS-97, the 101st Space Shuttle mission.

    STS-97 ↗

  4. 2007

    Atlasjet Flight 4203 crashes in Keçiborlu while on approach to Isparta Süleyman Demirel Airport, killing 57.

    Atlasjet Flight 4203 ↗

Every launch on November 30

22 launches

ONLINE
  1. 2025Long March 7A | Shijian 28CASCSUCCESS
  2. 2024Long March 12 | Maiden FlightCASCSUCCESS
  3. 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | NROL-126SpXSUCCESS
  4. 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-65SpXSUCCESS
  5. 2022Soyuz 2.1b | Kosmos 2565 (Lotos-S1 #7)VKSSUCCESS
  6. 2018Rokot / Briz-KM | 3 x Rodnik (Kosmos 2530, 2531, 2532)VKSSUCCESS
  7. 2016SpaceShipTwo | VSS Unity CC04VGSUCCESS
  8. 2014Soyuz-2.1b/Fregat | Glonass-K1 (Kosmos 2501)VKOSUCCESS
  9. 2009Zenit | Intelsat IS-15SLSUCCESS
  10. 2000Proton-K/DM-2M | Sirius FM-3KhSCSUCCESS
  11. 1989Soyuz U | Yantar-4K2 49CCCPSUCCESS
  12. 1988Soyuz U | Zenit-8 73CCCPSUCCESS
  13. 1983Proton-K/DM | Gorizont 8CCCPSUCCESS
  14. 1983Soyuz U | Yantar-4K1 12CCCPSUCCESS
  15. 1973Molniya-M | Molniya-1K 26CCCPSUCCESS
  16. 1973Soyuz | Kosmos 613CCCPSUCCESS
  17. 1972Kosmos 11K63 | DS-U1-IK 2CCCPSUCCESS
  18. 1971Kosmos-3M | Tselina-O 13CCCPSUCCESS
  19. 1970Atlas SLV-3C Centaur | OAO BUSAFFAILURE
  20. 1968Kosmos-3M | Sfera 3CCCPSUCCESS
  21. 1964Molniya 8K78 | Zond-2CCCPSUCCESS
  22. 1960Thor DM-21 Ablestar | Transit 3AUSAFFAILURE

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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