Launches
ON RECORD16MISSIONS
15 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1970 and the latest in 2026.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
January 9 in spaceflight
16 launches flew on January 9, the earliest of them in 1970, and 15 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 3 spaceflight and astronomy events on January 9. 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 1962.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on January 9
1962
Apollo program: NASA announces plans to build the C-5 rocket launch vehicle, then known as the "Advanced Saturn", to carry human beings to the Moon.
Apollo program ↗1992
Radio astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail announced the discovery of two pulsar planets orbiting PSR B1257+12 (depicted), the first confirmed detection of exoplanets.
Aleksander Wolszczan ↗1992
The first discoveries of extrasolar planets are announced by astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail. They discovered two planets orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257+12.
Exoplanet ↗
Launches on January 9Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
16 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-96SpXSUCCESS
- 2024Long March 2C | Einstein ProbeCASCSUCCESS
- 2023LauncherOne | Start Me UpVOFAILURE
- 2023Ceres-1 | 5 satellitesGESUCCESS
- 2018Long March 2D | SuperView-1 (Gaojing 1-03 & Gaojing 1-04)CASCSUCCESS
- 2017Kuaizhou 1A | Multiple payloadsEPSUCCESS
- 2014Antares 120 | Cygnus CRS Orb-1 (S.S. C. Gordon Fullerton)OSCSUCCESS
- 2012Long March 4B | Ziyuan 3 & VesselSat-2CASCSUCCESS
- 2001Long March 2F | Shenzhou-2CASCSUCCESS
- 1990Space Shuttle Columbia / OV-102 | STS-32LSOCSUCCESS
- 1987Soyuz U | Yantar-4K2 28CCCPSUCCESS
- 1986Kosmos-3M | Strela-1M 297-304CCCPSUCCESS
- 1985Soyuz U | Yantar-4K2 12CCCPSUCCESS
- 1981Molniya-M | Molniya-3 25LCCCPSUCCESS
- 1980Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 15CCCPSUCCESS
- 1970Voskhod | Zenit-2M 7CCCPSUCCESS
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.
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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.
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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.