Launches
ON RECORD17MISSIONS
17 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1962 and the latest in 2024.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
January 26 in spaceflight
17 launches flew on January 26, the earliest of them in 1962, and 17 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 2 spaceflight and astronomy events on January 26. 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 1949.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on January 26
1949
The Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory in California, the largest aperture optical telescope in the world for 28 years, saw first light.
Hale Telescope ↗1962
Ranger 3 is launched to study the Moon. The space probe later misses the Moon by 22,000 miles (35,400 km).
Ranger 3 ↗
Launches on January 26Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
17 launches
ONLINE
- 2024SpaceShipTwo | Galactic 06VGSUCCESS
- 2023Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 5-2SpXSUCCESS
- 2023H-IIA 202 | IGS Radar 7MHISUCCESS
- 1993Molniya-M | US-K 72PRSCSUCCESS
- 1989Kosmos-3M | Strela-2M 46CCCPSUCCESS
- 1989Proton | Gorizont 17CCCPSUCCESS
- 1988Soyuz U | Zenit-8 58CCCPSUCCESS
- 1984Kosmos-3M | Taifun-1 17CCCPSUCCESS
- 1984Soyuz-U | Zenit-6U 91 (Kosmos 1533)CCCPSUCCESS
- 1983Delta 3910 | IRASUSAFSUCCESS
- 1978Delta 2914 | IUEUSAFSUCCESS
- 1978Long March 2 | FSW-0 3CASCSUCCESS
- 1973Kosmos-3M | Zaliv-GVM 4CCCPSUCCESS
- 1971Kosmos 11K63 | DS-P1-Yu 39CCCPSUCCESS
- 1971Atlas SLV-3C Centaur | INTELSAT IV F2USAFSUCCESS
- 1967Thor Delta E | ESSA 4USAFSUCCESS
- 1962Atlas Agena B | Ranger 3USAFSUCCESS
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.
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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.