Launches
ON RECORD18MISSIONS
16 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1961 and the latest in 2025.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
1961 · 65 years ago today
Gagarin
Yuri Gagarin completed one orbit aboard Vostok 1 and became the first human being in space.
read more1981 · 45 years ago today
The first Space Shuttle flight
Columbia flew STS-1 with John Young and Robert Crippen aboard, the first orbital spacecraft flown crewed on its maiden flight.
read more
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
April 12 in spaceflight
18 launches flew on April 12, the earliest of them in 1961, and 16 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 4 spaceflight and astronomy events on April 12. Pick another date to see what happened on it.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD4ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia for this date, oldest first, starting in 1961.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on April 12
1961
Aboard Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin performed the first human spaceflight, completing one orbit of Earth in 108 minutes.
Vostok 1 ↗1961
Space Race: The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first crewed orbital flight, Vostok 1.
Space Race ↗1985
Space Shuttle Discovery launches on STS-51D to deploy two communications satellites.
Space Shuttle Discovery ↗
Launches on April 12Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
18 launches
ONLINE
- 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | NROL-192SpXSUCCESS
- 2017Long March 3B | Shijian-13/Chinasat-16CASCSUCCESS
- 2013SpaceShipTwo | VSS Enterprise CF01VGSUCCESS
- 2012Unha-3 | Kwangmyongsong-3KCSTFAILURE
- 2006Zenit | JCSAT 5ASLSUCCESS
- 2005Long March 3B | Apstar 6CASCSUCCESS
- 2003Atlas | Asiasat 4LMTSUCCESS
- 1999Atlas IIAS | Eutelsat W3LMTSUCCESS
- 1985Space Shuttle Discovery / OV-103 | STS-51-DLSOCSUCCESS
- 1983Kosmos-3M | Strela-2M 31CCCPSUCCESS
- 1981Space Shuttle Columbia / OV-102 | STS-1NASASUCCESS
- 1980Molniya-M | US-K 14CCCPSUCCESS
- 1979Molniya-M | Molniya-1K 43CCCPSUCCESS
- 1974Voskhod | Zenit-4MK 23CCCPFAILURE
- 1973Kosmos 11K63 | DS-P1-Yu 61CCCPSUCCESS
- 1967Voskhod | Zenit-4 28CCCPSUCCESS
- 1964Sputnik 11A59 | Polyot-2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1961Vostok-K | Vostok 1CCCPSUCCESS
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.