Launches
ON RECORD26MISSIONS
24 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1965 and the latest in 2025.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
1997 · 29 years ago today
Cassini-Huygens departs
Cassini launched toward Saturn with the Huygens probe attached, taking seven years and two Venus flybys to get there.
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ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
October 15 in spaceflight
26 launches flew on October 15, the earliest of them in 1965, and 24 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 4 spaceflight and astronomy events on October 15. 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 1997.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on October 15
2001
NASA's Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles (180 km) of Jupiter's moon Io.
Galileo (spacecraft) ↗2002
A Soyuz-U rocket carrying Foton-M No.1 fails after liftoff from Plesetsk Cosmodrome and crashes, killing one person and injuring eight others.
Soyuz-U ↗
Launches on October 15Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
26 launches
ONLINE
- 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer CSpXSUCCESS
- 2024Long March 4C | Gaofen-12 05CASCSUCCESS
- 2024Long March 6A | SpaceSail Polar Group #2CASCSUCCESS
- 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 9-7SpXSUCCESS
- 2024Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 10-10SpXSUCCESS
- 2023Long March 2D | Yunhai-1-04CASCSUCCESS
- 2022Angara 1.2 | EMKA-3 (Kosmos 2560)VKSSUCCESS
- 2022Falcon 9 Block 5 | Hotbird 13FSpXSUCCESS
- 2021Long March 2F/G | Shenzhou 13CASCSUCCESS
- 2018Long March 3B / YZ-1 | Beidou-3 M15 & M16CASCSUCCESS
- 2017Atlas V 421 | NROL-52ULASUCCESS
- 2014PSLV XL | IRNSS-1CISROSUCCESS
- 2009Soyuz U | Progress M-03MRFSASUCCESS
- 2003Long March 2F | Shenzhou-5CASCSUCCESS
- 2002Soyuz-U-PVB | Foton-M No. 1VKSFAILURE
- 1997Titan IVB/Centaur | Cassini-HuygensLMTSUCCESS
- 1994PSLV | IRS-P2ISROSUCCESS
- 1986Molniya-M | US-K 50 (Kosmos 1785)CCCPSUCCESS
- 1986Tsiklon-3 | Strela-3 13 to 18CCCPFAILURE
- 1981Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 49CCCPSUCCESS
- 1976Vostok 8A92M | Meteor-1 26 (35L)CCCPSUCCESS
- 1974Scout B-1 | Ariel 5SERCSUCCESS
- 1973Voskhod | Zenit-2M 43CCCPSUCCESS
- 1972Delta 0300 | NOAA 2USAFSUCCESS
- 1970Vostok 8A92M | Meteor-1 6 (16L)CCCPSUCCESS
- 1965Titan IIIC | OV2-1USAFSUCCESS
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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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.