Launches
ON RECORD19MISSIONS
18 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1964 and the latest in 2023.
ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
October 6 in spaceflight
19 launches flew on October 6, the earliest of them in 1964, and 18 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 4 spaceflight and astronomy events on October 6. 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 1990.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on October 6
1990
Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-41, and deploys the Ulysses space probe to study the Sun's polar regions.
Space Shuttle Discovery ↗1995
Astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz reported the discovery of a planet orbiting 51 Pegasi as the first known exoplanet around a main-sequence star.
Michel Mayor ↗2008
The MESSENGER probe discovered Mercury's Rembrandt (pictured) – the second largest impact crater on the planet.
MESSENGER ↗
Launches on October 6Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
19 launches
ONLINE
- 2023Atlas V 501 | Amazon Leo (Project Kuiper) Protoflight MissionULASUCCESS
- 2023SpaceShipTwo | Galactic 04VGSUCCESS
- 2020Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink 12SpXSUCCESS
- 2010Long March 4B | Shijian 6G & Shijian 6HCASCSUCCESS
- 2001Proton | Raduga-1 6KhSCSUCCESS
- 2000Ariane 42L | N-SAT-110ASASUCCESS
- 1995Kosmos-3M | Parus 84NPFAILURE
- 1994Atlas IIAS | INTELSAT 703USAFSUCCESS
- 1992Long March 2C | FSW-1 4 & FrejaCASCSUCCESS
- 1990Space Shuttle Discovery / OV-103 | STS-41LSOCSUCCESS
- 1986Soyuz U | Yantar-1KFT 6CCCPSUCCESS
- 1986Long March 2C | FSW-0 8CASCSUCCESS
- 1981Delta 2310 | Solar Mesosphere ExplorerUSAFSUCCESS
- 1978Soyuz U | Zenit-4MKM 21CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Delta 2910 | AE-DUSAFSUCCESS
- 1973Voskhod | Zenit-4MK 15CCCPSUCCESS
- 1969Vostok 8A92M | Meteor-1 2 (15L)CCCPSUCCESS
- 1964Thor DM-21 Ablestar | Transit-O 1USAFSUCCESS
- 1964Voskhod | Voskhod-3KV 1CCCPSUCCESS
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.
- 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.