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December 3 in spaceflight

26 orbital launches flew on December 3, the earliest of them in 1965, and 25 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 9 spaceflight and astronomy events on December 3. Below are the pictures NASA published on December 3 in 5 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.

Launches

ON RECORD

26MISSIONS

25 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1965, the most recent 2025.

Recorded events

IN THE RECORD

9ENTRIES

Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1799 onward.

Pictures from this date

PUBLISHED

5IMAGES

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

Published on December 3

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

Visualization: Near a Black Hole and Disk

2025

Visualization: Near a Black Hole and Disk

What would it look like to plunge into a monster black hole? This image from a supercomputer visualization shows the entire sky as seen from a simulated camera plunging toward a 4-million-solar-mass black hole, similar to the one at the center of our galaxy. The camera lies about 16 million kilometers from the black hole’s event horizon and is moving inward at 62% the speed of light. Thanks to gravity’s funhouse effects, the starry band of the Milky Way appears both as a compact loop at the top of this view and as a secondary image stretching across the bottom. Move the cursor over the image for additional explanations. Visualizations like this allow astronomers to explore black holes in ways not otherwise possible.

NASA · public domain

Ice Clouds over a Red Planet

2024

Ice Clouds over a Red Planet

If you could stand on Mars -- what might you see? You might look out over a vast orange landscape covered with rocks under a dusty orange sky, with a blue-tinted Sun over the horizon, and odd-shaped water clouds hovering high overhead. This was just the view captured last March by NASA's rolling explorer, Perseverance. The orange coloring is caused by rusted iron in the Martian dirt, some of which is small enough to be swept up by winds into the atmosphere. The blue tint near the rising Sun is caused by blue light being preferentially scattered out from the Sun by the floating dust. The light-colored clouds on the right are likely composed of water-ice and appear high in the Martian atmosphere. The shapes of some of these clouds are unusual for Earth and remain a topic of research.

NASA · public domain

Moon Setting Behind Teide Volcano

2023

Moon Setting Behind Teide Volcano

These people are not in danger. What is coming down from the left is just the Moon, far in the distance. Luna appears so large here because she is being photographed through a telescopic lens. What is moving is mostly the Earth, whose spin causes the Moon to slowly disappear behind Mount Teide, a volcano in the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa. The people pictured are 16 kilometers away and many are facing the camera because they are watching the Sun rise behind the photographer. It is not a coincidence that a full moon rises just when the Sun sets because the Sun is always on the opposite side of the sky from a full moon. The featured video was made in 2018 during the full Milk Moon. The video is not time-lapse -- this was really how fast the Moon was setting.

© El Cielo de Canarias — used with the credit NASA publishes

Stereo Mars near Opposition

2022

Stereo Mars near Opposition

Mars looks sharp in these two rooftop telescope views captured in late November from Singapore, planet Earth. At the time, Mars was about 82 million kilometers from Singapore and approaching its opposition, opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky on December 8. Olympus Mons, largest of the volcanoes in the Tharsis Montes region (and largest known volcano in the Solar System), is near Mars' western limb. In both images it's the whitish donut-shape at the upper right. The dark area visible near center is the Terra Sirenum region while the long dark peninsula closest to the planet's eastern limb is Sinus Gomer. Near its tip is Gale crater, the Curiosity rover's landing site in 2012. Above Sinus Gomer, white spots are other volcanoes in the Elysium region. At the top of the planet is the north polar cap covered with ice and clouds. Taken about two days apart, these images of the same martian hemisphere form a stereo pair. Look at the center of the frame and cross your eyes until the separate images come together to see the Red Planet in 3D.

© Marco Lorenzi — used with the credit NASA publishes

Comet Leonard and the Whale Galaxy

2021

Comet Leonard and the Whale Galaxy

Sweeping through northern predawn skies, on November 24 Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) was caught between two galaxies in this composite telescopic image. Sporting a greenish coma the comet's dusty tail seems to harpoon the heart of NGC 4631 (top) also known as the Whale Galaxy. Of course NGC 4631 and NGC 4656 (bottom, aka the Hockey Stick) are background galaxies some 25 million light-years away. On that date the comet was about 6 light-minutes from our fair planet. Its closest approach to Earth (and even closer approach to Venus) still to come, Comet Leonard will grow brighter in December. Already a good object for binoculars and small telescopes, this comet will likely not return to the inner Solar System. Its perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, will be on January 3, 2022.

© Gregg Ruppel — used with the credit NASA publishes

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What happened on December 3

  1. 1799

    War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Wiesloch: Austrian Lieutenant Field Marshal Anton Sztáray defeats the French at Wiesloch.

    War of the Second Coalition ↗

  2. 1904

    Himalia, Jupiter's largest irregular moon, was discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at the Lick Observatory in California.

    Himalia (moon) ↗

  3. 1904

    The Jovian moon Himalia is discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at California's Lick Observatory.

    Moons of Jupiter ↗

  4. 1965

    Soviet Union, Space probe of the Luna program, called Luna 8, is launched, but crashes on the Moon.

    Soviet Union ↗

  5. 1973

    Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.

    Pioneer program ↗

  6. 1999

    NASA lost contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before it reached the atmosphere of Mars and disappeared.

    NASA ↗

  7. 1999

    NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere.

    NASA ↗

  8. 2005

    XCOR Aerospace makes the first crewed rocket aircraft delivery of U.S. Mail in Kern County, California.

    XCOR Aerospace ↗

  9. 2014

    The Japanese space agency, JAXA, launches the space explorer Hayabusa2 from the Tanegashima Space Center on a six-year round trip mission to an asteroid to collect rock samples.

    JAXA ↗

Every launch on December 3

26 launches

ONLINE
  1. 2025Zhuque-3 | Demo FlightLSSUCCESS
  2. 2024Long March 3B/E | TJSW-13CASCSUCCESS
  3. 2023Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-31SpXSUCCESS
  4. 2020Chang'e | Chang'e 5CNSASUCCESS
  5. 2020Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat-M | Gonets-M30, Gonets-M31, Gonets-M32VKSSUCCESS
  6. 2018Falcon 9 Block 5 | Spaceflight SSO-ASpXSUCCESS
  7. 2018Soyuz-FG | Soyuz MS-11RFSASUCCESS
  8. 2017Long March 2D | LKW-1 (Land Survey Satellite-1)CASCSUCCESS
  9. 2016SpaceShipTwo | VSS Unity GF01VGSUCCESS
  10. 2015Vega | LISA PathfinderASASUCCESS
  11. 2014H-IIA 202 | Hayabusa-2MHISUCCESS
  12. 2013Falcon 9 v1.1 | SES-8SpXSUCCESS
  13. 2012Zenit 3SL | Eutelsat 70BSLSUCCESS
  14. 1999Ariane 40 | Helios 1BASASUCCESS
  15. 1985Soyuz U | Zenit-8 25CCCPSUCCESS
  16. 1982Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 70CCCPSUCCESS
  17. 1981Tsiklon-3 | Tselina-D 32CCCPSUCCESS
  18. 1975Voskhod | Zenit-2M 63CCCPSUCCESS
  19. 1971Tsiklon-2 | I2P 8CCCPSUCCESS
  20. 1971Voskhod | Zenit-2M 24CCCPFAILURE
  21. 1970Voskhod | Zenit-4MK 4CCCPSUCCESS
  22. 1969Voskhod | Zenit-2M 6CCCPSUCCESS
  23. 1968Kosmos 11K63 | DS-P1-Yu 17CCCPSUCCESS
  24. 1967Voskhod | Zenit-4 37CCCPSUCCESS
  25. 1966Voskhod | Zenit-4 25CCCPSUCCESS
  26. 1965Molniya 8K78 | Luna-8CCCPSUCCESS

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

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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.

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