Launches
ON RECORD18MISSIONS
16 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1966 and the latest in 2026.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
1966 · 60 years ago today
Venera 3 reaches Venus
Venera 3 struck Venus and became the first human-made object to reach the surface of another planet, its transmitter already dead.
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ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
March 1 in spaceflight
18 launches flew on March 1, the earliest of them in 1966, and 16 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 3 spaceflight and astronomy events on March 1. 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 1966.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on March 1
1966
Venera 3 Soviet space probe crashes on Venus becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.
Venera 3 ↗2002
The Envisat environmental satellite successfully launches aboard an Ariane 5 rocket to reach an orbit of 800 km (500 mi) above the Earth, which was the then-largest payload at 10.5 m long and with a diameter of 4.57 m.
Envisat ↗2002
Space Shuttle Columbia is launched on STS-109 to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
Space Shuttle Columbia ↗
Launches on March 1Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
18 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-23SpXSUCCESS
- 2025Kuaizhou 1A | Unknown PayloadEPFAILURE
- 2022Atlas V 541 | GOES-TULASUCCESS
- 2018Atlas V 541 | GOES-SULASUCCESS
- 2017Atlas V 401 | NROL-79ULASUCCESS
- 2013Falcon 9 v1.0 | SpX CRS-2SpXSUCCESS
- 2010Proton-M/DM-2 Enhanced | 3 x Glonass-M (Kosmos 2459, Kosmos 2460, Kosmos 2461)KhSCSUCCESS
- 2005Zenit | XM-3SLSUCCESS
- 2002Space Shuttle Columbia / OV-102 | STS-109USASUCCESS
- 2002Ariane 5 G | EnvisatASASUCCESS
- 1997Ariane 44P | INTELSAT 801ASASUCCESS
- 1985Soyuz U | Zenit-8 12CCCPSUCCESS
- 1984Delta 3920 | Landsat 5USAFSUCCESS
- 1979Vostok 8A92M | Meteor-2 4CCCPSUCCESS
- 1973Voskhod | Zenit-4MK 10CCCPSUCCESS
- 1972Vostok 8A92M | Tselina-D 3CCCPSUCCESS
- 1972Titan IIIC | DSP 3USAFSUCCESS
- 1966Molniya-M | Luna-10aCCCPFAILURE
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.