March 21 in Universe History: Space Missions, Satellites and Exploration
March 21, 2026
2022
On 21 March 2022, OneWeb said it had contracted with SpaceX to launch its satellites after Russia forced an eleventh-hour cancellation of a planned Baikonur mission, shifting providers in the broadband-constellation market and showing how geopolitics can reshape access to launch services and deployment schedules for space networks.
2024
On 21 March 2024, SpaceX CRS-30 lifted off carrying NASA’s BurstCube CubeSat. After later release from the International Space Station, BurstCube was designed to detect and localize short gamma-ray bursts and send rapid alerts to Earth, enabling follow-up by other observatories and multimessenger campaigns focused on neutron-star mergers.
Related Entities
All names in this article
Alphonsus
Arianespace
ASI
AsiaSat 3S
Atlas-Agena
AVUM
Baikonur
BOLT-2
BurstCube
Cape Canaveral
Cassini
CRS-30
Dragon
Drew Feustel
Europe’s Spaceport
Expedition 1
Expedition 55
Expedition 56
Falcon 9
French Guiana
High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager
Imaging Science Subsystem
Ingenuity
International Launch Services
JPL
Kennedy
L4 Lagrange point
Leonardo
Marina Vasilevskaya
Mars 1
MDIS
Mercury
MESSENGER
Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport
NASA Planetary Data System
National Reconnaissance Office
NROL-123
Oleg Artemyev
Oleg Novitskiy
OneWeb
PDS4 Standards Reference
Perseverance
PRISMA
Proton
Ranger 9
Ricky Arnold
Rocket Lab Electron
Saturn
Soyuz Flight ST28
Soyuz MS-08
SPICE
Starsem
Terrier-Improved Malemute
Titan
Tracy Dyson
Vega
Wallops
Wallops Island
Asia
Europe
Russia
Air Force Research Laboratory
Earth
Io
Mars
Moon
Sun
International Space Station
Space Shuttle Discovery
STS-102