Cape Canaveral Space Force Station

Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), located on Florida's Atlantic coast adjacent to and sharing facilities with NASA's Kennedy Space Center, is the United States' primary military spaceport and one of the world's busiest launch facilities — managed by the 45th Space Wing (now Space Launch Delta 45) of the United States Space Force, hosting launch complexes supporting SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and other commercial and government launch providers.

Established in 1950 as the Joint Long Range Proving Ground for missile testing, Cape Canaveral has served as the launch site for nearly every major U.S. space program milestone: the first American satellite (Explorer 1, 1958), the first American in orbit (John Glenn, Friendship 7, 1962), all of the Gemini program missions, and unmanned lunar probes. The station's launch complexes span decades of development: Launch Complex 36 hosted Atlas-Centaur rockets; LC-17 hosted Thor-Delta through Delta II; LC-41 hosts ULA's Atlas V and will host Vulcan Centaur.

Today's active launch infrastructure includes Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) — SpaceX's primary Falcon 9 launch pad for commercial satellite and government payload missions — and Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37), which hosts ULA's Delta IV Heavy and Atlas V operations. SpaceX's SLC-40 has supported over 100 Falcon 9 launches and serves as the workhorse pad for Starlink constellation replenishment, commercial satellite deployment, and NASA cargo missions. Space Launch Complex 13 (SLC-13) serves as SpaceX's primary landing zone for Falcon 9 first-stage boosters (Landing Zone 1 and Landing Zone 2), enabling rapid turnaround reuse.

CCSFS also hosts Eastern Range tracking and range safety operations covering the Atlantic Ocean downrange corridor, manages frequency coordination and airspace/maritime exclusion zones for all launches from the Cape, and coordinates with the Federal Aviation Administration for commercial launch licensing. The station's proximity to the equator (28.5°N) provides favorable delta-v for geostationary transfer orbit missions.