On January 24, 2017 at 07:44 UTC the Japanese H-2A rocket was launched from Tanegashima Cosmodrome situated at the island located 115 km south of Kyushu. Kyushu is the third largest island of Japan and most southwesterly of its four main islands. The rocket orbited the DSN 2, also known as “Kirameki-2”, military communications satellite. It is Japan's first dedicated military communication satellite and is designed for at least fifteen years of service.

On January 21, 2017 at 00:42 UTC the "Atlas-5” rocket-carrier was launched from Cape Canaveral launch site of US Air Force. The launch was performed by United Launch Alliance supported by the 45th Space Wing of US Air Force. The rocket orbited the “SBIRS GEO Flight 3” (Space Base Infrared System Geosynchronous Earth Orbit) reconnaissance satellite. The first two SBIRS GEO satellites — launched in 2011 and 2013 — currently cover the eastern Atlantic and Europe, Africa, the Middle East, all of Asia and Australia, and the western Pacific. They are the newest part of a global constellation that employs three types of satellites in two diverse orbits to cover the entire planet with persistent monitoring to detect and track adversarial missile launches.

American astronaut Eugene Andrew «Gene» Cernan, a Navy pilot and veteran of NASA’s pioneering Gemini program who was the second American to walk in space and then flew to the moon twice as an Apollo astronaut, becoming the last Apollo moonwalker, passed away after a long illness on January 16, 2017. He was 82.