Launches
ON RECORD21MISSIONS
19 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1961 and the latest in 2025.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
August 23 in spaceflight
21 launches flew on August 23, the earliest of them in 1961, and 19 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 2 spaceflight and astronomy events on August 23. Pick another date to see what happened on it.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD2ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia for this date, oldest first, starting in 1966.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on August 23
1966
Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.
Lunar Orbiter 1 ↗
Launches on August 23Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
21 launches
ONLINE
- 2025Electron | Live, Laugh, Launch (Calistus A-E)RLSUCCESS
- 2023Electron | We Love the Nightlife (Capella Acadia 1)RLSUCCESS
- 2023Chollima-1 | Malligyong-1bNADAFAILURE
- 2023Soyuz 2.1a | Progress MS-24 (85P)RFSASUCCESS
- 2022Kuaizhou 1A | Chuangxin-16CASICSUCCESS
- 2020Long March 2D | Gaofen-9-05CASCSUCCESS
- 2005Dnepr | KirariISCKSUCCESS
- 2000Delta 8930 | DM-F3USAFSUCCESS
- 1997Athena I | LewisLMTSUCCESS
- 1994Molniya-M | Molniya-3 60LPRSCSUCCESS
- 1990Tsiklon-2 | US-P 34CCCPSUCCESS
- 1989Soyuz-U2 | Progress M-1CCCPSUCCESS
- 1988Soyuz U | Resurs-F2 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1988Soyuz U | Zenit-8 67CCCPSUCCESS
- 1985Tsiklon-2 | US-A 27CCCPSUCCESS
- 1983Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 84CCCPSUCCESS
- 1973Atlas SLV-3D Centaur | INTELSAT IV F7USAFSUCCESS
- 1969Titan 23B | KH-8 23USAFSUCCESS
- 1967Thor Burner 2 | DSAP-4A F3USAFSUCCESS
- 1962Scout X-2M | DSAP-1 F2USAFSUCCESS
- 1961Atlas LV-3A | Ranger 1USAFPARTIAL
FIELD KIT / LIBRARY
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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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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.