Launches
ON RECORD16MISSIONS
13 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1959 and the latest in 2025.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
1970 · 56 years ago today
Apollo 13's oxygen tank fails
An oxygen tank ruptured two hundred thousand miles from Earth and the crew moved into the lunar module to survive the trip home.
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ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
April 13 in spaceflight
16 launches flew on April 13, the earliest of them in 1959, and 13 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 2 spaceflight and astronomy events on April 13. 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 1960.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on April 13
1960
The United States launches Transit 1-B, the world's first satellite navigation system.
Transit (satellite navigation system) ↗1970
At 10:08 PM EST an oxygen tank aboard the Apollo 13 Service Module explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the Apollo command and service module (codenamed "Odyssey") while en route to the Moon.
Oxygen ↗
Launches on April 13Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
16 launches
ONLINE
- 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 12-17SpXSUCCESS
- 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-49SpXSUCCESS
- 2007Long March 3A | Beidou DW 1CASCSUCCESS
- 1994Atlas I | GOES 8GDSUCCESS
- 1991Delta II | ASC 2USAFSUCCESS
- 1990Delta 6925-8 | Palapa B2RUSAFSUCCESS
- 1990Soyuz U | Yantar-4KS1 14CCCPSUCCESS
- 1985Zenit-2 | GVM Tselina-2CCCPFAILURE
- 1976Tsiklon-2 | IS-A 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Atlas F | P72-2USAFFAILURE
- 1974Delta 2914 | Westar 1USAFSUCCESS
- 1969Atlas SLV-3A Agena D | Canyon 2USAFSUCCESS
- 1967Lambda 4S | Ohsumi 3ISASFAILURE
- 1963Kosmos-2I 63S1 | Omega 1CCCPSUCCESS
- 1960Thor DM-21 Ablestar | Transit 1BUSAFSUCCESS
- 1959Thor Agena A | Discoverer 2USAFSUCCESS
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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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.