Launches
ON RECORD21MISSIONS
19 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1963 and the latest in 2026.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
January 17 in spaceflight
21 launches flew on January 17, the earliest of them in 1963, and 19 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 1 spaceflight and astronomy event on January 17. Pick another date to see what happened on it.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD1ENTRY
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia for this date, oldest first, starting in 1997.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on January 17
1997
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station: A Delta II carrying the GPS IIR-1 satellite explodes 13 seconds after launch, dropping 250 tons of burning rocket remains around the launch pad.
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station ↗
Launches on January 17Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
21 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | NROL-105SpXSUCCESS
- 2026Ceres-2 | Demo FlightGEFAILURE
- 2025Long March 2D | PRSC-EO1CASCSUCCESS
- 2024Long March 7 | Tianzhou-7CASCSUCCESS
- 2022Long March 2D | Shiyan 13CASCSUCCESS
- 2021LauncherOne | Launch Demo 2VOSUCCESS
- 2018Epsilon | ASNARO-2JAXASUCCESS
- 2016Falcon 9 v1.1 | Jason-3SpXSUCCESS
- 2014SpaceShipTwo | VSS Enterprise GF28VGSUCCESS
- 1997Delta II | GPS IIR-1USAFFAILURE
- 1991Soyuz-U-PVB | Zenit-8 97CCCPSUCCESS
- 1990Soyuz U | Zenit-8 89CCCPSUCCESS
- 1986Proton-K/DM | Raduga 18CCCPSUCCESS
- 1986Tsiklon-3 | Tselina-D 53CCCPSUCCESS
- 1985Kosmos-3M | Strela-2M 36CCCPSUCCESS
- 1978Kosmos-3M | Parus 12CCCPSUCCESS
- 1976Delta 2914 | HermesUSAFSUCCESS
- 1975Voskhod | Zenit-2M 54CCCPSUCCESS
- 1974Kosmos-3M | Zaliv 16CCCPSUCCESS
- 1968Thor SLV-2A Agena D | Multigroup 3 & Setter 1B-2USAFSUCCESS
- 1963X-15 | Flight 77USAFSUCCESS
FIELD KIT / LIBRARY
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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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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.