Wallops Flight Facility

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Launch facilities on Wallops Island
WFF Main Base, Mainland Site and Island Launch Site

The Wallops Flight Facility ( WFF ; IATA : WAL, ICAO : kwal) is a space station of NASA . The facility is operated by the Goddard Space Flight Center . It is located on the island of Wallops Island on the US east coast and thus belongs to the state of Virginia . Along with Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Vandenberg Air Force Base, the WFF is one of the oldest rocket launch sites in the world.

The commercial spaceport Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) has been located directly to the south since the mid-2010s and shares parts of the WFF infrastructure.

use

Wallops Island takes off with an incline of between 37 degrees and 70 degrees. The WFF was also an emergency landing site for the space shuttle .

The first rocket launch on Wallops Island took place on July 4, 1945. On December 4, 1959, the rhesus monkey Sam was sent on a ballistic flight from here as part of the Mercury program . Other important tests were carried out here, such as the test flights for the rescue towers of the Mercury and Apollo programs .

Today, Wallops Island serves as a rocket launch site for sounding rockets and the occasional launch of smaller satellites . The Scout rocket was used for satellite launches between 1960 and 1994 . Since then, a copy of the Conestoga rocket and some Pegasus rockets have been used for orbital launches.

construction

The Wallops Flight Facility is divided into three parts: the Wallops Main Base , Wallops Mainland Site, and Wallops Island Launch Site .

The area of ​​the Main Base includes the administration, the facilities for research and telemetry, the ground station for track tracking, as well as the centers for takeoff and telecommunications. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the US Coast Guard and the US Navy can also be found on the premises .

The radar systems as well as the transmission and reception systems are located in the western part ( Wallops Mainland ) of the WFF. The launch systems, the radar systems, as well as assembly and storage halls are located in the area of ​​the Wallops Island Launch Site .

history

The launch area of ​​Wallops Island was established in 1945 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the forerunner of NASA ). It was initially under the direction of the Langley Research Center .

In 1958, however, after the establishment of NASA, the Langley Research Center was withdrawn and Wallops Island became a separate NASA facility. In 1974 the launch area was renamed Wallops Flight Center , then in 1981 the Wallops Flight Facility and assigned to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Test of a Mercury spaceship using a Little Joe rocket (left), launch of a Scout rocket (right)

Tests of the Mercury spacecraft and escape tower were carried out here from 1959 to 1961, even before the first manned launches in the Mercury program were made from the Kennedy Space Center . On August 21, 1959, an attempt to launch a Little Joe 1 rocket was made. Due to a technical problem, however, the rescue system ignited 30 minutes before the regular start. The Mercury capsule rose to a height of 600 m and fell into the Atlantic Ocean after a flight time of 20 seconds.

On December 4, 1959, the rhesus monkey Sam was launched with a Little Joe 2 rocket, the first living creature to be launched with a US rocket. Biomedical tests were carried out for the planned manned space flights. A month later, on January 21, 1960, another rhesus monkey, Miss Sam , was launched on a suborbital flight with a Little Joe 1B rocket . Biomedical tests were carried out again.

A failure occurred on November 8, 1960 with the launch of a Little Joe 5 rocket and the Mercury spaceship No. 3. The spaceship did not separate from the rocket. On April 28 and June 30, 1960, there were two more partially successful launches of a Little Joe rocket with the Mercury spaceship No. 14.

Another important project began with the first launch and suborbital flight of a complete scout rocket on July 1, 1960. On a second launch, the Scout missile reached an altitude of 2,414 km. On December 4, 1960, the first attempt was made to launch a satellite from the WFF. However, since the second stage of the Scout missile failed to fire, the Explorer S-56 satellite crashed into the Atlantic Ocean .

On February 16, 1961, a satellite ( Explorer 9 ) was successfully launched into orbit for the first time with a Scout rocket . The satellite burned up three years later in the earth's atmosphere.

With the launch of the RFD-1 satellite on May 22, 1963, a first successful re-entry was tested during a suborbital flight. Two months later, the heat protection material was tested in another re-entry test. Communication problems during re-entry were investigated with the launch of the RAM C-1 satellite on October 19, 1967.

On June 18, 1976, the suborbital probe Gravity Probe A was launched to experimentally test Einstein's general theory of relativity .

In the 2000s, the WFF gave its southernmost facility, Launch Complex 0, to the new Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport.

Launch ramps

launch pad Coordinates Starting places status Remarks
Launch Area 0
(historical)
37.8315 N 75.4901 W. 1 Terrier Recruit , Conestoga 1620 ; meanwhile part of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport and expanded by a second launch site
Launch Area 1 37.8352 N 75.4861 W. 1 Astrobee F, Little Joe
Launch Area 2 37.8376 N 75.4834 W. 1 Black Brant , Electron (planned)
Launch Area 3 37.8503 N 75.4725 W. 2 Scout B, Scout D, Scout G, Scout X, Scout X-1, Scout X-2, Scout X-3, Scout X-4, Scout X-5
Launch Area 4 37.8508 N 75.4702 W. 1 Blue Scout Junior , Journeyman , Little Joe
Launch Area 5 37.8529 N 75.4681 W. 1 Black Brant
Runway RW04 / 22 1 Pegasus XL

To date, more than 14,000 missiles have been launched from Wallops Island.

Web links

Coordinates: 37 ° 50 ′ 24 ″  N , 75 ° 28 ′ 48 ″  W.