Launches
ON RECORD28MISSIONS
27 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1962 and the latest in 2026.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
2000 · 26 years ago today
Expedition 1 launches
Soyuz TM-31 carried the first resident crew to the International Space Station. It has been occupied ever since.
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ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
October 31 in spaceflight
28 launches flew on October 31, the earliest of them in 1962, and 27 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 3 spaceflight and astronomy events on October 31. Pick another date to see what happened on it.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD3ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia for this date, oldest first, starting in 2000.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on October 31
2000
Soyuz TM-31 launches, carrying the first resident crew to the International Space Station. The ISS has been crewed continuously since then.
Soyuz TM-31 ↗2005
The discovery of the Plutonian moons Nix and Hydra, based on photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope nearly five months earlier, was announced.
Moons of Pluto ↗2014
During a test flight, the VSS Enterprise, a Virgin Galactic experimental spaceflight test vehicle, suffers a catastrophic in-flight breakup and crashes in the Mojave Desert, California.
VSS Enterprise ↗
Launches on October 31Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
28 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 15-18SpXSUCCESS
- 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 11-23SpXSUCCESS
- 2025Long March 2F/G | Shenzhou 21CASCSUCCESS
- 2024Soyuz 2.1a | Kosmos 2579 (Bars-M No. 6)VKSSUCCESS
- 2023Long March 6A | Tianhui 5CASCSUCCESS
- 2022Long March 5B | MengtianCASCSUCCESS
- 2017Minotaur-C (Taurus XL) | 6 x SkySat & 4 x DoveOASUCCESS
- 2015Atlas V 401 | GPS IIF-11 (USA-265)ULASUCCESS
- 2014SpaceShipTwo | VSS Enterprise PF04VGFAILURE
- 2012Soyuz-U | Progress M-17M (49P)RFSASUCCESS
- 2011Long March 2F/G | Shenzhou-8 & Shenzhou-8-GCCASCSUCCESS
- 2010Long March 3C | Compass-G4CASCSUCCESS
- 2000Soyuz-U | Soyuz TM-31RFSASUCCESS
- 1995Zenit-2 | Tselina-2 17RFSASUCCESS
- 1994Proton | ElektroKhSCSUCCESS
- 1986Soyuz U | Resurs-F1 17F40 61L 3CCCPSUCCESS
- 1984Tsiklon-2 | US-A 25CCCPSUCCESS
- 1982Soyuz U | Progress 16CCCPSUCCESS
- 1981Molniya-M | US-K 23CCCPSUCCESS
- 1981Titan IIIC | Vortex 10USAFSUCCESS
- 1980Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 28CCCPSUCCESS
- 1980Atlas SLV-3D Centaur | FLTSATCOM 4USAFSUCCESS
- 1979Vostok 8A92M | Meteor-2 5CCCPSUCCESS
- 1974Kosmos-3M | DS-U2-IK 5CCCPSUCCESS
- 1973Soyuz U | Bion 1CCCPSUCCESS
- 1972Voskhod | Zenit-4MK 9CCCPSUCCESS
- 1968Voskhod | Zenit-4M 1CCCPSUCCESS
- 1962Thor DM-21 Ablestar | ANNA 1BUSAFSUCCESS
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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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.