Cape Canaveral (coastline)
| Canaveral National Seashore | |||
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| Location: | Florida , United States | ||
| Specialty: | Subtropical coast with long sandy beaches | ||
| Next city: | Titusville | ||
| Surface: | 233.3 km² | ||
| Founding: | 3rd January 1975 | ||
| Visitors: | 1,005,402 (2006) | ||
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Cape Canaveral is a stretch of coast and cape on Merritt Island , roughly in the middle of the east coast of Florida ( USA ) in Brevard County . "Cañaveral" is the Spanish word for reed .
In the south of the island are the most important space stations of the American space travel. On the one hand the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) of NASA , from which so far all manned rockets of the USA have started, up to 1975 the Saturn V , up to 2011 the Space Shuttle and for the first time on May 30, 2020 from Ramp 39A a reusable Crew Dragon of the private US Space company SpaceX . On the other hand, the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) of the US Air Force , from which the unmanned rocket launches with Atlas , Delta , Titan and other rockets take place. In the 1960s, the CCAFS also launched the manned missions of the Mercury and Gemini programs.
After the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy in 1963, the rocket launch site and the coastline were renamed in his memory and were then called Cape Kennedy . The name was officially registered by the US Department of the Interior's Board of Geographic Names in 1964 . The name was never accepted by the local population and in 1973 the Florida State authorities changed the name of the Cape back to Cape Canaveral. The KSC kept its name.
Conservation and Tourism
In 1963, a large part of the island of 567 km² was placed under strict conservation and the administration of the US Fish and Wildlife Service as the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge . The area partially overlaps with the security zone of the KSC. The rest of the island (about 233 km²) was designated in 1975 under the name Canaveral National Seashore as a nature reserve and recreation area under the administration of the National Park Service . The National Seashore includes around 40 km of sandy beaches. Large parts of both protected areas will be closed to visitors for security reasons during rocket launches.
