Launches
ON RECORD14MISSIONS
13 of them reached orbit. The earliest was 1966, the most recent 2026.
MARKED ON THIS DATE
1986 · 40 years ago today
Challenger
Challenger broke apart seventy-three seconds after liftoff, killing all seven aboard, including the teacher Christa McAuliffe.
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ARCHIVE // DAY OF YEAR
January 28 in spaceflight
14 orbital launches flew on January 28, the earliest of them in 1966, and 13 reached orbit. Wikipedia records 2 spaceflight and astronomy events on January 28. Below are the pictures NASA published on January 28 in 4 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD2ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1986 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED4IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for January 28, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on January 28
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2026
M78: Reflecting Blue in a Sea of Red
In the vast Orion Molecular Cloud complex, several bright blue nebulas are particularly apparent. Pictured here in the center are two of the most prominent reflection nebulas - dust clouds lit by the reflecting light of bright embedded stars. The more famous nebula is M78, in the image center, cataloged over 200 years ago. To its upper left is the lesser known NGC 2071. Astronomers continue to study these reflection nebulas to better understand how interior stars form. The overall red glow is from diffuse hydrogen gas that covers much of the Orion complex that spans much of the constellation of Orion. Nearby in the greater complex, which lies about 1,500 light years away, are the Orion Nebula, the Horsehead Nebula, and Barnard's Loop -- partially seen here as the white band on the upper left. Almost Hyperspace: Random APOD Generator
© Daniel McCauley — used with the credit NASA publishes
2025
Comet G3 ATLAS over Uruguay
Comets can be huge. When far from the Sun, a comet's size usually refers to its hard nucleus of ice and rock, which typically spans a few kilometers -- smaller than even a small moon. When nearing the Sun, however, this nucleus can eject dust and gas and leave a thin tail that can spread to an enormous length -- even greater than the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Pictured, C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) sports a tail of sunlight-reflecting dust and glowing gas that spans several times the apparent size of a full moon, appearing even larger on long duration camera images than to the unaided eye. The featured image shows impressive Comet ATLAS over trees and a grass field in Sierras de Mahoma, San Jose, Uruguay about a week ago. After being prominent in the sunset skies of Earth's southern hemisphere, Comet G3 ATLAS is now fading as it moves away from the Sun, making its impressive tails increasingly hard to see. Gallery: Comet ATLAS (G3)
© Mauricio Salazar — used with the credit NASA publishes
2024
Pluto in True Color
What color is Pluto, really? It took some effort to figure out. Even given all of the images sent back to Earth when the robotic New Horizons spacecraft sped past Pluto in 2015, processing these multi-spectral frames to approximate what the human eye would see was challenging. The result featured here, released three years after the raw data was acquired by New Horizons, is the highest resolution true color image of Pluto ever taken. Visible in the image is the light-colored, heart-shaped, Tombaugh Regio, with the unexpectedly smooth Sputnik Planitia, made of frozen nitrogen, filling its western lobe. New Horizons found the dwarf planet to have a surprisingly complex surface composed of many regions having perceptibly different hues. In total, though, Pluto is mostly brown, with much of its muted color originating from small amounts of surface methane energized by ultraviolet light from the Sun.
NASA · public domain
2023
Comet ZTF over Mount Etna
Comet-like plumes are blowing over the volcanic peaks of Mount Etna in this wintry mountain-and-skyscape from planet Earth. The stacked and blended combination of individual exposures recorded during the cold night of January 23, also capture naked-eye Comet ZTF just above Etna's snowy slopes. Of course the effect of increasing sunlight on the comet's nucleus and the solar wind are responsible for the comet's greenish coma and broad dusty tail. This weekend Comet ZTF is dashing across northern skies between north star Polaris and the Big Dipper. From a dark site you can only just spot it as a fuzzy patch though. That's still an impressive achievement if you consider you are gazing at a visitor from the distant Oort cloud with your own eyes. But binoculars or a small telescope will make for an even more enjoyable view of this Comet ZTF in the coming days. Comet ZTF Gallery: Notable Submissions to APOD
© Dario Giannobile — used with the credit NASA publishes
What happened on January 28
1986
The Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds into its tenth mission (video featured), killing all seven crew members.
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster ↗1986
Space Shuttle program: STS-51-L mission: Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrates after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts on board.
Space Shuttle program ↗
Every launch on January 28
14 launches
ONLINE
- 2026Falcon 9 Block 5 | GPS III SV09SpXSUCCESS
- 2024Simorgh | Mahda, Keyhan-2 & Hatef-1ISASUCCESS
- 2017Soyuz STB/Fregat-MT | Hispasat 36W-1 (Hispasat AG1)ASASUCCESS
- 2011Soyuz-U | Progress M-09M (41P)RFSASUCCESS
- 2010Proton-M / Briz-M Enhanced | Globus-1M #12L (Raduga-1M 2)KhSCSUCCESS
- 2008Proton-M Briz-M | Ekspress AM-33KhSCSUCCESS
- 1994Soyuz U | Progress M-21RFSASUCCESS
- 1989Soyuz U | Yantar-4K2 43CCCPSUCCESS
- 1986Space Shuttle Challenger / OV-099 | STS-51-LLSOCFAILURE
- 1986Soyuz U | Zenit-8 27CCCPSUCCESS
- 1977Delta 2914 | NATO 3BUSAFSUCCESS
- 1976Kosmos-3M | Strela-1M 105-112CCCPSUCCESS
- 1975Kosmos 11K63 | DS-P1-Yu 75CCCPSUCCESS
- 1966Scout A | Transit-O 7USAFSUCCESS
FIELD KIT / LIBRARY
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General-audience astronomy and spaceflight — none of it a textbook.
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LISTING
Cosmos — Carl Sagan
Still the best single argument for why any of this matters, and it leaves the arithmetic in. For a reader who wants the science, not just the awe.
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LISTING
Pale Blue Dot — Carl Sagan
The case for leaving Earth, written by someone unsentimental about how hard that is. Suits readers who want the argument rather than the poster.
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LISTING
Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir
Hard-SF problem solving in The Martian's key — for anyone who liked the engineering more than the peril. The only novel on this list.
BROWSE opens an Amazon search, not a specific recommendation.
LINKS AMAZON.COM
Sources and licences
Event text and thumbnails come from Wikipedia and are used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Images are drawn only from Wikimedia Commons, which does not accept non-free content — each thumbnail links to its file page, where its licence and author are recorded.
Launch records are from The Space Devs’ Launch Library 2. Pictures are NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day; NASA imagery is generally not subject to copyright, but individual APOD entries are frequently the property of the photographer, and each caption says which applies.