Launches
ON RECORD1MISSION
1 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1959 and the latest in 1959.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
1959 · 67 years ago today
Luna 1 leaves Earth behind
Luna 1 became the first spacecraft to reach escape velocity, missing the Moon and entering orbit around the Sun.
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ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
January 2 in spaceflight
1 launch flew on January 2, the earliest of them in 1959, and 1 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 3 spaceflight and astronomy events on January 2. Pick another date to see what happened on it.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD3ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia for this date, oldest first, starting in 1860.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on January 2
1860
French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier (pictured) announced the putative discovery of the planet Vulcan at a meeting at the French Academy of Sciences in Paris.
Urbain Le Verrier ↗1959
The Soviet Luna 1, the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon, was launched by a Vostok rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Luna 1 ↗2004
The Stardust space probe flew by the comet Wild 2 and collected particle samples from its coma, which were later returned to Earth.
Stardust (spacecraft) ↗
Launches on January 2Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
1 launches
ONLINE
- 1959Vostok-L 8K72 | Luna-1CCCPSUCCESS
FIELD KIT / LIBRARY
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- VIEW
LISTING
Cosmos, by Carl Sagan
Sagan's tour of the universe and how we came to understand it. It keeps the science in.
- VIEW
LISTING
Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan
Sagan's case for people leaving Earth one day, and an honest look at how hard that would be.
- VIEW
LISTING
Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
A science-fiction novel from the author of The Martian, built around solving one engineering problem after another.
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LINKS AMAZON.COM
Sources and licences
Event text and thumbnails come from Wikipedia and are used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Images come only from Wikimedia Commons, which doesn't accept non-free content. Each thumbnail links to its file page, which lists its licence and author.
Launch records are from The Space Devs’ Launch Library 2. Pictures are NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. Many of them belong to the photographer or a partner agency, so we only show the ones credited to NASA alone.