Historical Launch Sites

A tiny Kwajalein atoll islet where SpaceX began. Falcon 1 first flew in March 2006, and on its fourth flight in September 2008 it ...

A converted self propelled oil platform that launched Zenit rockets from the equator on the Pacific, backed by American, Norwegian...

France built its first rocket range near Colomb-Bechar in the Sahara. Veronique sounding rockets flew from the 1950s, and in Novem...

The birthplace of spaceflight and of the missile age. The army team under von Braun developed the V-2, first flown successfully in...

The original east coast missile and rocket test site at Musudan-ri. Orbital attempts in 1998, 2006, and 2009 failed, prompting the...

Two converted oil platforms off Malindi flown by Italy with Kenyan cooperation. A Scout rocket put San Marco 2 in orbit in April 1...

The first Soviet missile range, near the Volga, where the first R-1 lifted off in October 1947. Small satellites rode light rocket...

A cosmodrome carved from a decommissioned missile division in the Amur region after Baikonur fell outside Russian borders. Start-1...

A horizontal launch operation at Newquay airport using a Boeing 747 that dropped a LauncherOne rocket over the Atlantic. The Janua...

A rocket range on Hudson Bay built for the International Geophysical Year, launching thousands of sounding rockets into the aurora...

A Saturn I and Saturn IB pad remembered for tragedy and recovery. On 27 January 1967 a cabin fire during a ground test killed the ...

The Atlas pad where John Glenn rode Friendship 7 into orbit in February 1962, followed by the other crewed Mercury Atlas flights. ...

A Redstone and Jupiter missile pad at the Cape that launched Alan Shepard aboard Freedom 7 in May 1961, the first American human s...

Explorer 1, the first American satellite, rose from Pad 26A on a Juno I rocket on 31 January 1958, answering Sputnik. The complex ...

Built for the Titan I missile, LC-19 launched all ten crewed Gemini missions in 1965 and 1966 on Titan II rockets, plus the two un...

Built for the Saturn I, LC-37 launched Saturn I and IB rockets including Apollo 5, the first uncrewed test of the Lunar Module in ...

Home of the Delta rocket for half a century, LC-17 launched Thor missiles and then Delta rockets carrying probes and satellites, i...

Built as a Thor missile pad in the late 1950s, SLC-2 became the West Coast home of the Delta rocket family, launching weather, Ear...

A Thor missile site converted to launch Thor based rockets carrying weather and military satellites. SLC-10 is a National Historic...

Site 1 at Baikonur, the pad that launched Sputnik 1 in 1957 and Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1 in 1961. For six decades it served th...

Built for the N1 Moon rocket, Site 110 saw all four N1 launch failures between 1969 and 1972, including a July 1969 explosion that...

The Soyuz launch site near Sinnamary let Arianespace fly Russian Soyuz rockets from French Guiana, gaining payload from the low la...

The launch complex built for the heavy Ariane 5, whose first flight from the pad in June 1996 ended in an explosion caused by a so...

Built to raise the launch rate of Ariane, ELA-2 allowed one rocket to be assembled away from the pad while another flew. It launch...

The desert site west of Baghdad where Iraq launched the al-Abid, a three stage rocket built from clustered Scud derived engines, i...

A remote Pacific atoll used for high altitude nuclear tests launched by rocket. Redstone missiles carried warheads in 1958 and Tho...

An off range launch site in Utah from which Athena test rockets were fired several hundred kilometers south into White Sands Missi...

The launch complex at White Sands where the US Army fired captured German V-2 rockets from 1946, including the October 1946 flight...

The farm field in Auburn, Massachusetts, where Robert Goddard launched the first liquid fueled rocket on 16 March 1926. The flight...

An abandoned munitions depot in Berlin turned into a rocket field by the German Society for Space Travel. Members including a youn...

The largest test stand at the Peenemunde rocket center, from which the A4 rocket, later the V-2 weapon, made its first successful ...

The first launch site at Cape Canaveral. On 24 July 1950 a Bumper rocket, a captured V-2 topped with a WAC Corporal, lifted off fr...

The Argentine Air Force rocket range in La Rioja province, a center of the national sounding rocket program of the 1960s. In Decem...

A gypsum runway complex in the New Mexico desert used for Space Shuttle pilot training in modified Gulfstream jets and as a backup...