Launches
ON RECORD15MISSIONS
15 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1959 and the latest in 2025.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
1972 · 54 years ago today
Pioneer 10 sets out for Jupiter
Pioneer 10 left Earth carrying a plaque, on the first mission to cross the asteroid belt and reach the outer planets.
read more
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
March 3 in spaceflight
15 launches flew on March 3, the earliest of them in 1959, and 15 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 1 spaceflight and astronomy event on March 3. 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 1969.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on March 3
Launches on March 3Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
15 launches
ONLINE
- 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 12-20SpXSUCCESS
- 2023Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 2-7SpXSUCCESS
- 2022Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 4-9SpXSUCCESS
- 2021Starship SN10 | 10 km FlightSpXSUCCESS
- 1987Tsiklon-3 | Tselina-D 59CCCPSUCCESS
- 1987Soyuz-U2 | Progress 28CCCPSUCCESS
- 1982Molniya-M | US-K 24CCCPSUCCESS
- 1980Atlas F/MSD | Parcae 3A,B,C & MSD 3USAFSUCCESS
- 1977Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1972Atlas SLV-3C Centaur | Pioneer 10USAFSUCCESS
- 1971Long March 1 | Shijian 1CASCSUCCESS
- 1971Voskhod | Zenit-4M 12CCCPSUCCESS
- 1969Saturn V | Apollo 9NASASUCCESS
- 1967Kosmos 11K63 | DS-U2-M 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1959Juno II | Pioneer 4NASASUCCESS
FIELD KIT / LIBRARY
SPONSORED
Astronomy and spaceflight books for a general reader. No textbooks.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Buying through these links doesn't cost you anything extra.
- 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.
- VIEW
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.
BROWSE opens an Amazon search. It isn't a pick of one product.
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.