Launches
ON RECORD20MISSIONS
20 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1963 and the latest in 2025.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
May 7 in spaceflight
20 launches flew on May 7, the earliest of them in 1963, and 20 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 1 spaceflight and astronomy event on May 7. Below are NASA's Astronomy Pictures of the Day for May 7, from 1 different years.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD1ENTRY
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia for this date, oldest first, starting in 1992.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED1IMAGE
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for May 7, in the years it credits only NASA. We don't show pictures that belong to a photographer or a partner agency.
Published on May 7
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for this date, in the years it credits only NASA.
2021
Mercury-Redstone 3 Launch
Sixty years ago, near the dawn of the space age, NASA controllers “lit the candle” and sent Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard arcing into space atop a Redstone rocket. His cramped space capsule was dubbed Freedom 7. Broadcast live to a global television audience, the historic Mercury-Redstone 3 (MR-3) spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Florida at 9:34 a.m. Eastern Time on May 5, 1961. The flight of Freedom 7, the first space flight by an American, followed less than a month after the first human venture into space by Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The 15 minute sub-orbital flight achieved an altitude of 116 miles and a maximum speed of 5,134 miles per hour. As Shepard looked back near the peak of Freedom 7's trajectory, he could see the outlines of the west coast of Florida, Lake Okeechobe in central Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bahamas. Shepard would later view planet Earth from a more distant perspective and walk on the Moon as commander of the Apollo 14 mission.
NASA · public domain
What happened on May 7
1992
Space Shuttle program: The Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on its first mission, STS-49.
Space Shuttle program ↗
Launches on May 7Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
20 launches
ONLINE
- 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-93SpXSUCCESS
- 2024Long March 6C | Maiden FlightCASCSUCCESS
- 2013Vega | Proba-V, VNREDSat 1A, ESTCube-1ASASUCCESS
- 2011Atlas V 401 | SBIRS GEO Flight 1 (USA-230) (SBIRS GEO-1)ULASUCCESS
- 2009Soyuz U | Progress M-02MRFSASUCCESS
- 2002Proton-K/DM-2M | DirecTV-5KhSCSUCCESS
- 1998Proton-K/DM-2M | Echostar IVKhSCSUCCESS
- 1998Molniya-M | US-K 79PRSCSUCCESS
- 1992Space Shuttle Endeavour / OV-105 | STS-49LSOCSUCCESS
- 1990Soyuz U | Yantar-4K2 52CCCPSUCCESS
- 1984Soyuz U | Progress 21CCCPSUCCESS
- 1983Tsiklon-2 | US-P 16CCCPSUCCESS
- 1981Kosmos-3M | Strela-2M 24CCCPSUCCESS
- 1980Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 18CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Delta 2914 | Anik A3USAFSUCCESS
- 1975Scout F-1 | SAS 3NASASUCCESS
- 1971Kosmos-3M | Strela-1M 9-16CCCPSUCCESS
- 1968Kosmos-3M | Zaliv 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1965Vostok 8A92 | Zenit-2 27CCCPSUCCESS
- 1963Thor Delta B | Telstar 2USAFSUCCESS
FIELD KIT / LIBRARY
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Astronomy and spaceflight books for a general reader. No textbooks.
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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.
- 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.
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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.