Launches
ON RECORD18MISSIONS
18 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1965 and the latest in 2023.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
1969 · 57 years ago today
Tranquility Base
Armstrong and Aldrin landed Eagle in the Sea of Tranquility with about twenty-five seconds of fuel remaining.
read more1976 · 50 years ago today
Viking 1 lands on Mars
Viking 1 landed on Chryse Planitia and sent back the first clear pictures from the surface of Mars.
read more
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
July 20 in spaceflight
18 launches flew on July 20, the earliest of them in 1965, and 18 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 5 spaceflight and astronomy events on July 20. Pick another date to see what happened on it.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD5ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia for this date, oldest first, starting in 1969.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on July 20
1969
The Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle landed on the Sea of Tranquillity, where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the Moon six and a half hours later (bootprint pictured).
Apollo 11 ↗1969
Apollo program: Apollo 11's crew successfully makes the first human landing on the Moon in the Sea of Tranquility. Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the Moon six and a half hours later.
Apollo program ↗1976
The Viking 1 lander became the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars and perform its mission.
Viking 1 ↗2019
Soyuz MS-13 is launched to the International Space Station on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Soyuz MS-13 ↗2021
American businessman Jeff Bezos flies to space aboard New Shepard NS-16 operated by his private spaceflight company Blue Origin.
Jeff Bezos ↗
Launches on July 20Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
18 launches
ONLINE
- 2023Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-15SpXSUCCESS
- 2023Kuaizhou 1A | Tianmu-1 07-10EPSUCCESS
- 2021New Shepard | NS-16BOSUCCESS
- 2020Falcon 9 Block 5 | ANASIS-IISpXSUCCESS
- 2019Soyuz-FG | Soyuz MS-13RFSASUCCESS
- 2001Molniya-M | Molniya-3PRSCSUCCESS
- 1995Soyuz U | Progress M-28RFSASUCCESS
- 1994Soyuz-U-PVB | Yantar-4K2 72VKSSUCCESS
- 1990Soyuz U | Zenit-8 93CCCPSUCCESS
- 1989Soyuz U | Zenit-8 84CCCPSUCCESS
- 1983Soyuz U | Resurs-F1 17F41 23LCCCPSUCCESS
- 1979Vostok 8A92M | Tselina-D 20CCCPSUCCESS
- 1977Soyuz U | Zenit-4MKM 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1977Molniya-M | US-K 8CCCPSUCCESS
- 1972Kosmos-3M | Strela-1M 25-32CCCPSUCCESS
- 1971Voskhod | Zenit-4M 18CCCPSUCCESS
- 1966Soyuz 11A510 | US-AO 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1965Atlas Agena D | Vela 3A & 3BUSAFSUCCESS
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.