Launches
ON RECORD17MISSIONS
16 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1960 and the latest in 2026.
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April 16 in spaceflight
17 launches flew on April 16, the earliest of them in 1960, and 16 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 1 spaceflight and astronomy event on April 16. 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 1972.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on April 16
Launches on April 16Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
17 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Soyuz 2.1b/Volga | Kosmos 2609-2614VKSSUCCESS
- 2025Minotaur IV | NROL-174NGSSSUCCESS
- 2023Long March 4B | Fengyun-3GCASCSUCCESS
- 2014Soyuz-U | EgyptSat 2 / ايجيبت ساتRFSASUCCESS
- 2010Soyuz-U | Kobalt-M (Kosmos 2462)VKSSUCCESS
- 2008Pegasus XL | Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS)OSCSUCCESS
- 2004Atlas IIAS | Superbird A2LMTSUCCESS
- 2002Ariane 44L | NSS 7ASASUCCESS
- 1997Ariane 44LP | Thaicom 3 & BSat 1aASASUCCESS
- 1993Tsiklon-3 | Tselina-R 4VKSSUCCESS
- 1991Kosmos-3M | Parus 72CCCPSUCCESS
- 1987Soyuz U | Yantar-4KS1 7CCCPSUCCESS
- 1985Soyuz U | Foton 1CCCPSUCCESS
- 1981Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 37CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Soyuz U | Zenit-4MK 40CCCPSUCCESS
- 1972Saturn V | Apollo 16NASASUCCESS
- 1960Vostok-L 8K72 | Luna-4bCCCPFAILURE
FIELD KIT / LIBRARY
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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.