Launches
ON RECORD22MISSIONS
21 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1963 and the latest in 2024.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
1990 · 36 years ago today
Pale Blue Dot
Voyager 1 turned its camera back toward the inner system and photographed Earth from beyond Neptune's orbit.
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ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
February 14 in spaceflight
22 launches flew on February 14, the earliest of them in 1963, and 21 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 3 spaceflight and astronomy events on February 14. 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 1990.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on February 14
1990
The NASA space probe Voyager 1 took Pale Blue Dot (detail pictured), a photograph of Earth from a record distance of 40.5 astronomical units (6.06 billion km; 3.76 billion mi).
NASA ↗1990
The Voyager 1 spacecraft takes the photograph of planet Earth that later becomes famous as Pale Blue Dot.
Voyager 1 ↗2000
The spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker enters orbit around asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid.
NEAR Shoemaker ↗
Launches on February 14Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
22 launches
ONLINE
- 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | USSF-124SpXSUCCESS
- 2022PSLV-XL | EOS-4 (RISAT-1A)ISROSUCCESS
- 2017Ariane 5 ECA | SKY Brasil-1 (Intelsat-32e) & Telkom-3SASASUCCESS
- 2014Proton-M/Briz-M | Türksat-4AILSSUCCESS
- 2012Proton-M Briz-M | SES-4ILSSUCCESS
- 2004Titan 402B IUS | DSP 22USAFSUCCESS
- 1998Delta 7420-10C | Globalstar 1 to 4USAFSUCCESS
- 1997Tsiklon-3 | Strela-3 116 to 118 & Gonets 4 to 6VKSSUCCESS
- 1996Long March 3B | INTELSAT 708CASCFAILURE
- 1991Proton | US-KMO 1CCCPSUCCESS
- 1990Delta 6920-8 | LACE & RMEUSAFSUCCESS
- 1989Delta 6925 | GPS-2 1USAFSUCCESS
- 1989Kosmos-3M | Duga-K 1CCCPSUCCESS
- 1989Molniya-M | US-K 60 (Kosmos 2001)CCCPSUCCESS
- 1987Zenit-2 | GVM Tselina-2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1984Mu-3S | OhzoraISASSUCCESS
- 1980Delta 3910 | Solar Maximum MissionUSAFSUCCESS
- 1978Soyuz U | Zenit-4MKM 12CCCPSUCCESS
- 1972Proton | Luna-20CCCPSUCCESS
- 1967Kosmos 11K63 | DS-U2-I 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1967Trailblazer 2 | Trailblazer PelletNASASUCCESS
- 1963Thor Delta B | Syncom 1USAFSUCCESS
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.