Launches
ON RECORD22MISSIONS
20 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1973 and the latest in 2026.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
May 21 in spaceflight
22 launches flew on May 21, the earliest of them in 1973, and 20 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 1 spaceflight and astronomy event on May 21. 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 2010.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on May 21
2010
JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, launches the solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS aboard an H-IIA rocket. The vessel would make a Venus flyby late in the year.
JAXA ↗
Launches on May 21Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
22 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 10-31SpXSUCCESS
- 2025Kinetica 1 | 6 satellitesCASSUCCESS
- 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 12-15SpXSUCCESS
- 2024Kuaizhou 11 | Wuhan-1 and othersEPSUCCESS
- 2023Falcon 9 Block 5 | Axiom Space Mission 2SpXSUCCESS
- 2023Long March 2C | MUST-1A/B & Luojia-2 01CASCSUCCESS
- 2018Antares 230 | Cygnus CRS OA-9 (S.S. J.R. Thompson)OASUCCESS
- 2010Ariane 5 ECA | Astra 3B & COMSATBw-2ASASUCCESS
- 2009Soyuz 2.1a/Fregat | Meridian No. 12LVKSFAILURE
- 2008Zenit | Galaxy 18SLSUCCESS
- 1993Soyuz U | Resurs-F2 9VKSSUCCESS
- 1991Soyuz-U-PVB | Resurs-F2 6CCCPSUCCESS
- 1988Proton | Uragan 26 to 28CCCPSUCCESS
- 1987Soyuz U | Resurs-F1 17F40 104L 4CCCPSUCCESS
- 1986Soyuz U | Foton 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1986Soyuz-U2 | Soyuz TM-1CCCPSUCCESS
- 1982Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 58CCCPSUCCESS
- 1981Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 39CCCPSUCCESS
- 1976Soyuz U | Zenit-4MKT 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Voskhod | Zenit-2M 57CCCPSUCCESS
- 1974Kosmos-3M | Tselina-O 23CCCPSUCCESS
- 1973Diamant B | Castor & PolluxCNESFAILURE
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.
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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.