Launches
ON RECORD22MISSIONS
20 of them succeeded. The earliest was in 1964 and the latest in 2026.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
2000 · 26 years ago today
The station is occupied
Expedition 1 opened the hatch on the International Space Station, beginning a continuous human presence in orbit.
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ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
November 2 in spaceflight
22 launches flew on November 2, the earliest of them in 1964, and 20 of them succeeded. Wikipedia lists 3 spaceflight and astronomy events on November 2. 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 1947.
Pictures from this date
NONE0IMAGES
There's no Astronomy Picture of the Day we can show for this date.
What happened on November 2
1947
In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden (and only) flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules (also known as the "Spruce Goose"), the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built until Scaled Composites rolled out their Stratolaunch in May 2017.
Howard Hughes ↗1990
British Satellite Broadcasting and Sky Television plc merge to form BSkyB as a result of massive losses.
British Satellite Broadcasting ↗2000
As members of Expedition 1, American astronaut William Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko (all pictured) became the first resident crew to arrive at the International Space Station.
Expedition 1 ↗
Launches on November 2Archive read 2026-11-05. Anything after that isn't listed here.
22 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Electron | The Sea God Surveys (iQPS Launch 9)RLSUCCESS
- 2025LVM-3 | CMS-03 (GSAT-7R)ISROSUCCESS
- 2025Falcon 9 Block 5 | Bandwagon 4 (Dedicated Mid-Inclination Rideshare)SpXSUCCESS
- 2023SpaceShipTwo | Galactic 05VGSUCCESS
- 2022Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat | EKS 6 (Tundra 6) (Kosmos 2563)VKSSUCCESS
- 2019Antares 230+ | Cygnus CRS-2 NG-12 (S.S. Alan Bean)NGSSSUCCESS
- 2016H-IIA 202 | Himawari-9MHISUCCESS
- 2012Proton-M / Briz-M Enhanced | Luch 5B & Yamal-300KKhSCSUCCESS
- 2010Soyuz-2.1a/Fregat | Meridian 3VKSSUCCESS
- 2009Rokot / Briz-KM | SMOSELSSUCCESS
- 1997VLS-1 | SCD-2AAEBFAILURE
- 1994Tsiklon-2 | US-PM 5RFSASUCCESS
- 1993Kosmos-3M | Parus 81NPSUCCESS
- 1982Soyuz U | Zenit-6U 68CCCPSUCCESS
- 1979Soyuz U | Yantar-2K 11CCCPSUCCESS
- 1973Molniya-M | US-K 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1971Voskhod | Zenit-4M 25CCCPSUCCESS
- 1967Thorad SLV-2G Agena D | KH-4A 44USAFSUCCESS
- 1966Atlas SLV-3 Agena D | KH-7 34USAFSUCCESS
- 1966R-36O 8K69 | OGCh 6CCCPFAILURE
- 1965UR-500 | Proton 2CCCPSUCCESS
- 1964Thor SLV-2A Agena D | KH-4A 13USAFSUCCESS
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.