Space U.S. Launch Facilities

The two main U.S. launch facilities are located at Cape Canaveral, Fla. and Vandenberg AFB, Calif. respectively

Cape Canaveral Vandenberg AFB

Lesser Sites

Cape Canaveral

a Shuttle on its way to its launch pad. NASA/KSC

Cape Canaveral facilities, on the eastern coast of Florida, originated as the Banana River Naval Air Station during WW2. The site eventually was allocated to the Army, then the Air Force, in 1949, in replacement of the White Sand Testing Range where the Army had settled since 1944 but which was proving too short then for safely testing V2s with respect to the surrounding population. It was called Long Range Proving Ground, as Bumper 8, a two-stage vehicle built from German V-2 missile and a sounding rocket upper-stage, became the first to liftoff from what is now known as Cape Canaveral on July 24, 1950. The Air Force developped missiles launch pads, a test range, and an Air Force base, Patrick AFB, at Cape Canaveral. When NASA was created in the late 1950s, it eventually settled on Merritt Island, a mere area of citrus groves, West of the Air Force launch area, and a 1963 agreement eventually divided the Cape Canaveral area between Merritt Island, as a property of NASA, and the seashore area which kept to be an Air Force rocketry asset. The Air Force test range was to be allowed to NASA. Merritt Island had been competing with Cumberland Island, Georgia to house NASA's emerging manned space program, planners noted that Air Force already had established the Eastern Range, and building a new center somewhere else would mean duplicating that work. President Kennedy also had been under pressure to build mission control and the astronauts' training base in Massachusetts, not Houston, Texas. As NASA ground became the John F. Kennedy Space Center, and Cape Canaveral was renamed Cape Kennedy, in 1963 in hommage to the assassinated President Kennedy, further litigation brought the geographical area back to Cape Canaveral in 1973, as the NASA facility retained the name John F. Kennedy Space Center. That name nowadays mostly is quoted like the Kennedy Space Center

see a map of Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS)! map © site 'Amateur Astronomy'

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Cape Canaveral continues today to be parted into the NASA and the Air Force settlements, that is the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on one hand, and the Eastern Space and Missile Center (ESMC) on the other hand. Kennedy Space Center is always located on the Merritt Island, a bit offset from the seashore. It's operated by NASA. It's now mainly dedicated to the Shuttle operations with the two main launch pads LC-39A and LC-39B related to the huge Vehicle Assemby Building (VAB) through a crawlerway, and with the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) where the returning shuttles are landing. KSC was once home to the Moon missions. The ESMC includes the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), Patrick AFB, and the Eastern Test Range (ETR). The ESMC is operated by the 45th Space Wing of the Air Force Space Command. It's the CCAFS -located along the seashore- which operates the space launches. The Kennedy Space Center is located at a northern, 28-degree latitude. More than 40 launch pads have been built at the CCAFS since 1950. Many are now obsolete, some have been destroyed or accessible to tourists only. The CCAFS serves indistinctly for unmanned NASA's, government or army launches. A lot of support is provided to NASA by the CCAFS

As far as the main launches and programs realized by NASA are concerned, they mostly all launched from Launch Complex 39's pads A and B, like the Apollo, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz or Space Shuttle programs. LC-39A is the pad where Apollo 11 lifted off from on the first manned moon landing in 1969, as well as launching the first space shuttle mission in 1981 and the last in 2011. They are located on Merritt Island, Fla., just north of Cape Canaveral. Both pads were originally built for the huge Saturn V rockets of the Apollo program. Following the joint U.S.-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission of July 1975, the pads were modified to support the Space Shuttle operations. Both pads were designed to support the concept of mobile launch operations, in which space vehicles are checked out and assembled in the protected environment of the Orbiter Processing Facility and the Vehicle Assembly Building, then transported by large, tracked crawlers to the launch pad for final processing and launch as, during the Apollo era, key pad service structures were mobile. Two permanent service towers were thus installed at each pad, the fixed service structure and the rotating service structure. On April 12, 1981, shuttle operations commenced at Pad A with the launch of Columbia on STS-1. After 23 more successful launches from A, the first space shuttle to lift off from Pad B was the ill-fated Challenger in January 1986. Pad B was designated for the resumption of shuttle flights in September 1988, followed by the reactivation of Pad A in January 1990. Both pads are octagonally shaped and share identical features. Each pad covers about a quarter-square mile of land. Launches are conducted from atop a concrete hardstand 390 feet by 325 feet, located at the center of the pad area. The Pad A and Pad B hardstands are 48 feet and 55 feet above sea level, respectively. A 300,000-gallon water tank is located at some distance of the pad and part of the sound suppression system during launch. All the following elements are part of the launch system, like the fixed service structure, orbiter access arm, External Tank hydrogen vent umbilical and intertank access arm, External Tank gaseous oxygen vent arm, emergency egress system, Rotating Service Structure, flame trench-deflector system, liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen storage, hypergolic storage, pad terminal connection room, launch pad-Mobile Launcher Platform interfaces, Sound Suppression System. Launch Complex 39A was handed over to SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies), the private company by NASA in April 2014 for a 20-year lease. Over the course of 2017, SpaceX reactivated Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, successfully launching a dozen missions from the historic pad as, in 2018, SpaceX will continue upgrading LC-39A to support its commercial crew missions. The company will maintain the pad. Launch Complex 39B, the twin pad to 39A will keep used by NASA for the SLS system

The Launch Control Center (LCC) was constructed at the southeast corner of the Vehicle Assembly Building in the Launch Complex 39 area of the Cape Canaveral, just a few miles from Launch Pads A and B. Although the original plans specified a steel structure, the final choice was reinforced concrete which was viewed as better for acoustical purposes. The massive double-paned windows were made of special heat and shock resistant glass and extend the full width of the east wall of the four firing rooms, providing a full view of the launch pads. The LCC opened for operation in early 1965. A four-story builing, the first, second and fourth floors of the LCC house offices, conference rooms, and various system and computer control centers. It is on the third floor that the four multilevel firing rooms are located. The firing room personnel was responsible for the supervision and control of the liftoff and vehicle until it cleared the launch pad towers. It was then that mission control at Johnson Space Center in Houston assumed control of the vehicle. The LCC first was instrumental for the Apollo program and then again for the Space Shuttle Program. Firing Room 1 was revamped in 2006

The Shuttle Landing Facility, which is where shuttles usually land, serves like an usual runway too for cargo planes bringing spacecraft for integration at KSC

The site of the Kennedy Space Center was chosen by NASA for a host reasons, including launch safety, orbital mechanics and because Florida doesn't typically freeze in the winter. That site however proved to be a unforecasted place for rust production! The salt air, heat, ultraviolet light and humidity make the area extremely corrosive for metals. Unprotected materials last about six months in the conditions. Other parts of the world offer high levels of one or two categories, but Cape Canaveral is unique because it has high levels in all categories. The space center also subjects its structures to rocket exhaust, particularly the acidic residue from the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters. Even when stainless steel is used, it's subject to that swift desintegration! New structures at Kennedy, such as the mobile service tower built for a next-generation launcher, use a more traditional -albeit environmental unfriendly- zinc-based covering, making the tower structure looks light gray. NASA thus has always been looking for new techniques warranting the pads and other infrastructures agains rust, like through the agency's Corrosion Technology Laboratory at Kennedy!

The Operations and Checkout Building renamed as the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building by July 2014 in honor of the first man ever to put foot on the Moon was built in 1964 and played a vital role in NASA’s spaceflight history. The high bay was used during the Apollo program to process and test the command, service and lunar modules as the facility is transitioning to the SLS program and able to process and assemble the Orion spacecraft. Originally the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building, the five-story structure, located in the Industrial Area, South of the large Vehicle Assembly Building, was completed in 1964, the first building finished at the Kennedy Space Center and was where Gemini astronauts stayed prior to launch. It remained the crews quarters since then. The facility was renamed the Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building prior to the start of the Space Shuttle Program. It also houses offices, payload and spacecraft checkout, test and assembly areas, as well as science laboratories

->The Launch Complex 39
Launch pads A and B, of the Launch Complex 39 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center were built on a swamp. They were originally constructed in the 1960s as clean pads and served as a starting point for the Apollo, the Skylab missions, one Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission, and 53 space shuttle flights. To fill in and build up the area, hundreds of tons of sand was dredged from the Atlantic Ocean and pumped along a road. A whole working environment was associated to. The only major difference between Pads A and B is that Pad B sits seven feet higher than the A. Work to modify the pad for the Space Shuttle Program began in 1979. The pads then were modified to handle the launch of NASA's Ares 1-X rocket on a test flight in October 2009. In 2011 dismantling of the Space Shuttle program structures (the fixed service and rotating service structures) began on pad B to create a clean pad capable of handling a variety of launch vehicles as more modifications continued to accomodate the first flight of the Orion spacecraft atop the SLS rocket. Launch Complex 39 is turning now part of the multi-user spaceport which the Kennedy Space Center has become. The area at and around the pad is now protected wetlands

Different views of how launch pads 39 at the KSC were successively configured. From left to right, for the Apollo, Space Shuttle and SLS programs respectively. site 'Amateur Astronomy'

Since NASA is now engaged into a collaboration with private companies to allow flights to the ISS, mostly, the Kennedy Space Center facilities are to be gradually updated to accomodate both such flights and also the ones of the SLS program, the new NASA endeavour to space and missions in the solar system. A multi-user spaceport means Kennedy is transitioning from supporting two or three large programs for long periods of time to supporting multiple customers with numerous, short-term efforts. Once the Space Shuttle program terminated by 2011, NASA began the process to transform the Kennedy Space Center from a historically government-only launch facility into a multi-user spaceport for both government and commercial use. On April 14, 2014, for example, the agency signed a property agreement with SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, for use of the launch site for the next 20 years. The refurbishment of the Vehicle Assembly Building or VAB, at the Kennedy Space Center, the iconic building which served since 1965 the Apollo program until to the Space Shuttle program to the integration of launchers and missions, will update the facility for another 40 years. For instance, High Bay 3 will see the seven work platforms designed for the Apollo/Saturn V removed. In their place will be a series of 10 platforms that can be relocated and fitted with inserts designed for processing different kinds of rockets as both the SLS system and commercial companies will have to accomodated. The five primary overhead cranes will also have their control systems modernized and new braking systems will be installed for the VAB doors as more than 50 miles of cabling will be replaced with modern lines, including much smaller fiber-optic infrastructure, or the fire suppression system updated. The building itself, generally, is in very good shape. Improvements were also made in the control rooms at Launch Pad 39B to upgrade systems to host a variety of different rockets and spacecraft. A extensive renovation of everything from the consoles in the Young-Crippen Firing Room to the computer servers in the Launch Control Center and Launch Pad 39B and all the cables and networks connecting them will also update the national spaceport. The renovations in the firing room that are part of the Spaceport Command and Control System, or SCCS, are proceeding at the same time the Ground Systems Development and Operations Program makes similarly grand upgrades at Launch Pad 39B and in the Vehicle Assembly Building. The goal is to install the devices and infrastructure for a launch center that can host several kinds of rockets at the same time. That is a revolutionary undertaking since previously all processing and launch systems were custom-fit to a specific vehicle such as the Space Shuttle. The firing room is updates with small-screen monitors inside blue metal boxes replaced by contemporary cabinets and modern computers and monitors. Instead of a given seat being suited for only one task, whoever sits down at the computer will be able to call up the appropriate data set for the work they are doing. On launch day, that could mean every available console is staffed with people dedicated to the liftoff. But afterward, when another vehicle or two is being processed for launch, the same consoles can be split to oversee the different operations. The workstations are off-the-shelf machines similar to the computers people have at home. The servers are the same ones found in many banks and commercial data centers thus taking advantage of the prevailing commercial markets. Smart systems including devices incorporating functions for sensing, actuation and control and capable of analyzing a situation based on the available data in a predictive or adaptive manner and taking actions will allow for more efficient, reduced staffing of Firing Rooms. New materials are also used for cables and other elements, substantially improving performance. Now a tiny fiber-optic cable carries the signals of more than 570 cameras from the launch pad to the control room. Similar innovations can be found throughout the upgrade, including at the facilities at Launch Pad 39B, where rooms built about 45 years ago look brand-new. As far as the SLS launches are concerned, with the launch umbilical tower back on the mobile launcher like in the time of the Apollo program, the configuration that will allow a great deal of the pre-launch preparations in the VAB instead the pad. A new crew access tower will be built for the Boeing's CST-100 at SLC-41 will reach 200 feet in height and include an elevator, as well as means for quick evacuation. SLC-41 is one of the most active launch complexes on the Space Coast. A new Small Class Vehicle Launch Pad, designated 39C was inaugurated by mid-2015 in the Launch Pad 39B area.The concrete pad measures about 50 feet wide by about 100 feet long and could support the combined weight of a fueled launch vehicle, payload and customer-provided launch mount, and an umbilical tower structure, fluid lines, cables and umbilical arms. Also developed was a universal propellant servicing system to provide liquid oxygen and liquid methane fueling capabilities for a variety of small class rockets

Space Launch Complex 17, or SLC-17 used to be one the myriad pads which launched early rockets, especially during a time when engineers tried to get machines to work right. Most pads since have been abandonned as the SLC-17 was adapted again and again to work with each new generation of rockets as it began to be dimantled finally in 2013. It featured twin launch pads, A and B, with their mobile servicing towers, a blockhouse whence controllers worked plus a processing building. Since a explosion in 1997, the launch control moved to a more secure control center farther away as until then it had stood between both launch pads. Such a proximity of services, as even launch teams kept trim, allowed to a easiness of operation. That pad launched the Delta II as its first successfull launch was that of the Echo 1, the first U.S. communications satellite in August 1960. The GPS was also launched from there or planetary (the Mars Pathfinder, Twin Rovers, Spitzer, etc.) or weather probes and craft. A rocket could be launched four or seven days after a other one as the U.S. Air Force or commercial operators also used the pad. The SLC-17 remained un-computerized until in 1995

Vandenberg AFB

Vandenberg, along the Pacific coastline, California, 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, in the Santa Barbara County, originated as Camp Cooke in 1941, an Army armored vehicles and infantry training facility. The range was transferred to the U.S. Air Force in 1956 to be used as a test range for intermediate range and intercontinental ballistic missiles (IRBMs/ICBMs) under the name of Cooke AFB which was soon renamed Vandenberg AFB in 1958 in honor of Gal Hoyt S. Vandenberg, the late Air Force Chief of Staff. The authority at the base was since this epoch divided into the Air Research and Development Command (ARDC) and the Strategic Air Command (SAC) as the base quickly turned too to the launch of polar orbiting satellites. The first Thor IRBM was launched from Vandenberg in Dec. 1958 as the Discoverer I satellite was launched there in February 1959. 1,900 missiles had been fired from the base as of 2010

->see a map of Vandenberg AFB! map © site 'Amateur Astronomy'

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Vandenberg AFB, Calif. is pursuing today about the same range of activities. It's home to the Western Space and Missile Center (WSMC) and it is operated by the 30th Wing of the Air Force Space Command. The WSMC comprises the Vandenberg AFB and the Western Test Range. Due to the free horizon South of Vandenberg, polar orbit satellites are launching there, for NASA, commercial, or military users as are most of the weather, environmental, and terrain satellites, like Landsat. There are about 52 launch pads, silos, and launch support sites in Vandenberg. The SLC-6 pad had been planned for Shuttle launch into polar orbit as that was abandonned in 1986 after Challenger loss. It's now modified for supporting Titan IV heavy launchers. Vandenberg is still an intensive place for missile tests. The Vandenberg AFB is located at 35 degree of latitude North

"Space Launch Complex" (SLC), "Launch Complex" (LC), and, informally, "launch pad", "Complex", are synonyms used to designate the locations, both at KSC and Vandenberg, used for launches. "Space Launch Complex" (SLC), "Launch Complex" (LC) are used with or without an hyphen, along with the number of the launch pad ("SLC-2", SLC 2", "LC-2", or "LC 2"). Each launch pad, usually, if fitted with a rail-mounted metallic gantry with a chamber in its upper part serving both for the integration of the launcher and then of the spacecraft atop the later, as it's rolled back when all operations are completed. A launch mast is the last device left along with the laucher. It's used to provide the last connections, like fuel or communications

Lesser Sites

NASA operates the Wallops Flight Facility. It's located on Wallops Island on Virginia's eastern shore. The Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) had been established in 1945 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics as a center for aeronautics research, and is now NASA's principal facility for managing and implementing suborbital research programs. The WFF is located in the northeastern portion of Accomack County, Va., on the Delmarva Peninsula, and is comprised of three land masses: the Main Base, Wallops Mainland and Wallops Island, the latter at 4,600 acres (1,680 hectares). Wallops is mostly used for sounding rockets, with some low cost orbital (3 such launches have occurred since 1995) or military missions like launched through a Minotaur 1 rocket. The Wallops tracking systems also serve for the Space Shuttle launches, as the site is used by NASA for tracking orbital payloads or gathering weather data for the USA. Wallops too features a 8,750 ft-long runway, which is able to be used like an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle. A new rocket integration facility has been installed at the Wallops Flight Facility in 2011, the 'Horizontal Integration Facility'. It will support medium class mission capabilities and the first customer to use the facility will be Orbital Sciences Corporation, with its Taurus II launch vehicle as that company will conduct missions for NASA under the agency's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services project and Commercial Resupply Services program. With the development of commercial missions as planned by the new U.S. space policy as determined by the Obama administration, Wallops could acquire more role as, for example, a agreement in 2012 was signed with Bermuda to establish a temporary mobile tracking station on Cooper's Island to support launches from there. WFF is also home to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) which holds several launch pads. The Poker Flats Research Range -located in Alaska, northeast of Fairbanks- is operated by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. It exists since 1968 and serves mainly for sounding and meteorological rockets. White Sands Missile Range is still in use today and serves for missiles, sounding rockets, and research vehicles. The Marshall Islands harbors a base too, from which light rockets, like the U.S. Air Force Falcon 1E rocket may launch nanosatellites

Anecdotically, one may also mention the Fort Churchill, which is a sounding rocket launching complex located in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. The Canadian army built the complex in 1954 to study the effects of auroras on long distance communications and endured a series of closings and reopenings as by 1959 it turned US Army like one of its sounding rocket stations and other research. Given back to Canada, Fort Fort Churchill since 1970, was used sporadically during the 1970s and 1980s, and was inactive by 1990, serving to upper atmosphere research. Over 3,500 sub-orbital flights were launched from the site in total. It was eventually designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1988. The Sonmiani Satellite Launch Center is a launch site approximately 90 miles northwest of Karachi, Pakistan as it is operational since late 1962 became operational in late 1962 after it was planned and built by NASA when a team of NASA's engineers visited Pakistan. It served NASA to conduct research in space and rocket technology. It also features a flight test range. As Pakistan began to pursue space technology since the 1980's, the launch center was expanded and modernized in the following decade and since the 2000's equipped with a high-tech computer and modernized electrical technology

A trend had appeared since the end of the 1990s about commercial launch enterprises and "spaceports" due to a boom in the satellite activity. This trend quickly faded however and the sector now is mostly aimed at suborbital tourism flights or at launch joint-project with the government like the Pegasus rocket program. SpaceShip One is operating from the Mojave airport with horizontal takeoff and landings as Orbital Sciences is providing suborbital missile launches from Kodiak Island, Alaska. Kodiak Island is further used as a backup polar orbit launch facility for Vandenberg AFB. Spaceport America, in southern New Mexico, is launching ashes of dead people in 4-minute suborbital flights and recovering them back in the New Mexico White Sands Range. A still working sea-based mobile launch platform is the joint endeavourSea Launch Co., between Boeing Commercial Space Co, Norway's Aker ASA, Russian rocket designer RSC-Energia and SDO Yuzhnoye-PO Yuzhmash of Ukraine. The platform is accompanied with an assembly-and-control ship as the set provides launch services for private firms. Due to the new choices made, in the USA, by the Obama administration in terms of space program, the part attributed to private space companies have increased. They are now to perform most of manned and cargo flights to the low Earth orbit or the International Space Station as NASA will focus upon robotic or manned missions of exploration in the solar system. That thus will have a influence upon the US launch facilities as the main idea looks like being that main facilities will be shared in common between the private and public sectors