Launches
ON RECORD14MISSIONS
13 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1966 and the latest in 2026.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
1986 · 40 years ago today
Challenger
Challenger broke apart seventy-three seconds after liftoff, killing all seven aboard, including the teacher Christa McAuliffe.
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ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
January 28 in spaceflight
14 launches flew on January 28, the earliest of them in 1966, and 13 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 2 spaceflight and astronomy events on January 28. 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 1986.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on January 28
1986
The Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds into its tenth mission (video featured), killing all seven crew members.
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster ↗1986
Space Shuttle program: STS-51-L mission: Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrates after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts on board.
Space Shuttle program ↗
Launches on January 28Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
14 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | GPS III SV09SpXSUCCESS
- 2024Simorgh | Mahda, Keyhan-2 & Hatef-1ISASUCCESS
- 2017Soyuz STB/Fregat-MT | Hispasat 36W-1 (Hispasat AG1)ASASUCCESS
- 2011Soyuz-U | Progress M-09M (41P)RFSASUCCESS
- 2010Proton-M / Briz-M Enhanced | Globus-1M #12L (Raduga-1M 2)KhSCSUCCESS
- 2008Proton-M Briz-M | Ekspress AM-33KhSCSUCCESS
- 1994Soyuz U | Progress M-21RFSASUCCESS
- 1989Soyuz U | Yantar-4K2 43CCCPSUCCESS
- 1986Space Shuttle Challenger / OV-099 | STS-51-LLSOCFAILURE
- 1986Soyuz U | Zenit-8 27CCCPSUCCESS
- 1977Delta 2914 | NATO 3BUSAFSUCCESS
- 1976Kosmos-3M | Strela-1M 105-112CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Kosmos 11K63 | DS-P1-Yu 75CCCPSUCCESS
- 1966Scout A | Transit-O 7USAFSUCCESS
FIELD KIT / LIBRARY
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Astronomy and spaceflight books for a general reader. No textbooks.
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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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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.