Launches
ON RECORD19MISSIONS
19 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1963 and the latest in 2025.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
July 31 in spaceflight
19 launches flew on July 31, the earliest of them in 1963, and 19 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 4 spaceflight and astronomy events on July 31. Pick another date to see what happened on it.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD4ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia for this date, oldest first, starting in 1964.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on July 31
1964
Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes.
Ranger program ↗1971
Apollo program: The Apollo 15 astronauts become the first to ride in a lunar rover.
Apollo program ↗1992
Space Shuttle program: Atlantis is launched on STS-46 to deploy the European Retrievable Carrier and the Tethered Satellite System.
Space Shuttle program ↗1999
Discovery Program: Lunar Prospector: NASA intentionally crashes the spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the Moon's surface.
Discovery Program ↗
Launches on July 31Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
19 launches
ONLINE
- 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 13-4SpXSUCCESS
- 2025Kuaizhou 1A | PRSC-S1EPSUCCESS
- 2021MOMO | Flight 6ISTECHSUCCESS
- 2019Soyuz 2.1a | Progress MS-12 (73P)RFSASUCCESS
- 2018Long March 4B | Gaofen-11CASCSUCCESS
- 2010Long March 3A | Compass-IGSO-1 ( BEIDOU-2 IGS-1)CASCSUCCESS
- 2001Tsiklon-3 | Koronas FVKSSUCCESS
- 1996Soyuz U | Progress M-32RFSASUCCESS
- 1995Atlas IIA | DSCS-3 B7LMTSUCCESS
- 1992Space Shuttle Atlantis / OV-104 | STS-46LSOCSUCCESS
- 1984Soyuz U | Yantar-4K2 9CCCPSUCCESS
- 1983Titan 34B | Jumpseat 7USAFSUCCESS
- 1980Kosmos-3M | Taifun-2 8CCCPSUCCESS
- 1980Soyuz U | Resurs-F1 17F41 13LCCCPSUCCESS
- 1979Molniya-M | Molniya-1K 44CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Voskhod | Zenit-4MK 47CCCPSUCCESS
- 1969Thorad SLV-2G Agena D | Strawman 2USAFSUCCESS
- 1967R-36O 8K69 | OGCh 11CCCPSUCCESS
- 1963Thor SLV-2A Agena D | KH-6 3USAFSUCCESS
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.