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December 16 in spaceflight

33 orbital launches flew on December 16, the earliest of them in 1962, and 33 reached orbit. Below are the pictures NASA published on December 16 in 5 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.

Launches

ON RECORD

33MISSIONS

33 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1962, the most recent 2025.

Recorded events

NONE FOUND

0ENTRIES

Wikipedia records no spaceflight or astronomy event on this date.

Pictures from this date

PUBLISHED

5IMAGES

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for December 16, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.

Published on December 16

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

Andromeda and Sprites over Australia

2025

Andromeda and Sprites over Australia

What’s happening over that tree? Two very different things. On the left is the Andromeda galaxy, an object that is older than humanity and will last billions of years into the future. Andromeda (M31) is similar in size and shape to our own Milky Way Galaxy. On the right is a red sprite, a type of lightning that lasts a fraction of a second and occurs above violent thunderstorms. Red sprites were verified as real atmospheric phenomena only about 35 years ago. The tree in the center is a boab, which may live for as long as a thousand years. Boab trees grow naturally in Australia and Africa and are known for being able to store large amounts of water: up to 100,000 liters. The featured image was captured last month near Derby in Western Australia.

© JJ Rao — used with the credit NASA publishes

A Kilometer High Cliff on Comet Churyumov - Gerasimenko

2024

A Kilometer High Cliff on Comet Churyumov - Gerasimenko

This kilometer high cliff occurs on the surface of a comet. It was discovered on the dark nucleus of Comet Churyumov - Gerasimenko (CG) by Rosetta, a robotic spacecraft launched by ESA, which orbited the comet from 2014 to 2016. The ragged cliff, as featured here, was imaged by Rosetta early in its mission. Although towering about one kilometer high, the low surface gravity of Comet CG would likely make a jump from the cliffs by a human survivable. At the foot of the cliffs is relatively smooth terrain dotted with boulders as large as 20 meters across. Data from Rosetta indicates that the ice in Comet CG has a significantly different deuterium fraction -- and hence likely a different origin -- than the water in Earth's oceans. The probe was named after the Rosetta Stone, a rock slab featuring the same text written in three different languages that helped humanity decipher ancient Egyptian writing.

NASA · public domain

Crescent Enceladus

2023

Crescent Enceladus

Peering from the shadows, the Saturn-facing hemisphere of tantalizing inner moon Enceladus poses in this Cassini spacecraft image. North is up in the dramatic scene captured during November 2016 as Cassini's camera was pointed in a nearly sunward direction about 130,000 kilometers from the moon's bright crescent. In fact, the distant world reflects over 90 percent of the sunlight it receives, giving its surface about the same reflectivity as fresh snow. A mere 500 kilometers in diameter, Enceladus is a surprisingly active moon. Data and images collected during Cassini's flybys have revealed water vapor and ice grains spewing from south polar geysers and evidence of an ocean of liquid water hidden beneath the moon's icy crust.

NASA · public domain

The Geminid

2022

The Geminid

Returning from beyond the Moon, on December 11 the Orion spacecraft entered Earth's atmosphere at almost 11 kilometers per second. That's half the speed of the grain of dust that created this long fireball meteor when it entered the atmosphere on December 13, near the peak of the annual Geminid meteor shower. As our fair planet makes its yearly pass through the dust trail of mysterious asteroid 3200 Phaethon, the parallel tracks of all Geminid meteors appear to radiate from a point in the constellation Gemini. But the twin stars of Gemini hide just behind the trees on the left in this night skyscape from the beautiful Blue Moon Valley, Yunnan, China. Reflected in the still waters of the mountain lake, stars of the constellation Orion are rising near center. Captured before moonrise, dazzling Mars is still the brightest celestial beacon in the scene.

© Jeff Dai — used with the credit NASA publishes

Geminids of the South

2021

Geminids of the South

Fireflies flash along a moonlit countryside in this scene taken on the night of December 13/14 from southern Uruguay, planet Earth. On that night meteors fell in the partly cloudy skies above during the annual Geminid meteor shower. Frames recorded over a period of 1.5 hours are aligned in the composite image made with the camera facing south. That direction was opposite the shower's radiant toward the north and so the Geminid meteor streaks appear to converge at an antiradiant below the southern horizon. The shower's apparent radiant (and antiradiant) is just due to perspective though. As Earth sweeps through the dust trail of mysterious asteroid 3200 Phaethon, the dust grains that create the Geminid shower meteors are really moving along parallel tracks. They enter Earth's atmosphere traveling at about 22 kilometers per second.

© Fefo Bouvier — used with the credit NASA publishes

Every launch on December 16

33 launches

ONLINE
  1. 2025Atlas V 551 | Amazon Leo (LA-04)ULASUCCESS
  2. 2025Long March 4B | Ziyuan-3-04CASCSUCCESS
  3. 2024Long March 2D | PIESAT-2 09-12CASCSUCCESS
  4. 2024Long March 5B/YZ-2 | SatNet LEO Group 01CASCSUCCESS
  5. 2023Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat-M | Arktika-M No.2RFSASUCCESS
  6. 2022Falcon 9 Block 5 | O3b mPower 1 & 2SpXSUCCESS
  7. 2022Falcon 9 Block 5 | SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography)SpXSUCCESS
  8. 2022Long March 11 | Shiyan 21CASCSUCCESS
  9. 2019Long March 3B/YZ-1 | Beidou-3 M19 & M20CASCSUCCESS
  10. 2018Electron | This One's For Pickering (VCLS ELaNa XIX)RLSUCCESS
  11. 2015PSLV-CA | TeLEOS-1ACLSUCCESS
  12. 2006Minotaur I | Tacsat 2OSCSUCCESS
  13. 1994Proton | Altair 13L (Luch 1)KhSCSUCCESS
  14. 1993Atlas IIAS | Telstar 401USAFSUCCESS
  15. 1991Ariane 44L | Telecom 2AASASUCCESS
  16. 1988Soyuz U | Yantar-4K2 42CCCPSUCCESS
  17. 1986Soyuz U | Yantar-4K2 27CCCPSUCCESS
  18. 1982Soyuz U | Yantar-4K1 6CCCPSUCCESS
  19. 1980Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 31CCCPSUCCESS
  20. 1979Soyuz U | Soyuz T-1CCCPSUCCESS
  21. 1978Delta 3914 | Anik BUSAFSUCCESS
  22. 1977Kosmos-3M | Strela-2M 16CCCPSUCCESS
  23. 1975Voskhod | Zenit-4MK 53CCCPSUCCESS
  24. 1975Feng Bao 1 | JSSW 2CASCSUCCESS
  25. 1973Delta 1900 | AE-CUSAFSUCCESS
  26. 1972Scout D-1 | Aeros 1NASASUCCESS
  27. 1971Voskhod | Zenit-4M 29CCCPSUCCESS
  28. 1970Kosmos-3M | Tselina-O 7CCCPSUCCESS
  29. 1968Molniya-M | Molniya-1Yu 15LCCCPSUCCESS
  30. 1967Voskhod | Zenit-2 57CCCPSUCCESS
  31. 1965R-36O 8K69 | OGCh 1CCCPSUCCESS
  32. 1965Thor Delta E | Pioneer 6USAFSUCCESS
  33. 1962Scout X-3 | Explorer 16NASASUCCESS

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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