Launches
ON RECORD5MISSIONS
5 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1999 and the latest in 2026.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
2019 · 7 years ago today
First landing on the lunar far side
Chang'e 4 set down in Von Karman crater, the first spacecraft to land on the side of the Moon that never faces Earth.
read more2004 · 22 years ago today
Spirit reaches Gusev Crater
The Mars rover Spirit landed in Gusev Crater on a mission planned for ninety days. It worked for six years.
read more
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
January 3 in spaceflight
5 launches flew on January 3, the earliest of them in 1999, and 5 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 2 spaceflight and astronomy events on January 3. Pick another date to see what happened on it.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD2ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia for this date, oldest first, starting in 1999.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on January 3
2019
Chang'e 4 makes the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, deploying the Yutu-2 lunar rover.
Chang'e 4 ↗
Launches on January 3Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
5 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | CSG-3SpXSUCCESS
- 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | Ovzon-3SpXSUCCESS
- 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 7-9SpXSUCCESS
- 2023Falcon 9 Block 5 | Transporter 6 (Dedicated SSO Rideshare)SpXSUCCESS
- 1999Delta 7425-9.5 | Mars Polar LanderUSAFSUCCESS
FIELD KIT / LIBRARY
SPONSORED
Astronomy and spaceflight books for a general reader. No textbooks.
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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.