Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida.
Headquartered at the nearby Patrick Space Force Base, the station is the primary launch site for the Space Force's Eastern Range[5] with three launch pads currently active (Space Launch Complexes 37B, 40, and 41). The facility is south-southeast of NASA's Kennedy Space Center on adjacent Merritt Island, with the two linked by bridges and causeways. The Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Skid Strip provides a 10,000-foot (3,000 m) runway[6] close to the launch complexes for military airlift aircraft delivering heavy and outsized payloads to the Cape.
A number of American space exploration pioneers were launched from CCSFS, including the first U.S. Earth satellite in 1958, first U.S. astronaut (1961), first U.S. astronaut in orbit (1962), first two-man U.S. spacecraft (1965), first U.S. unmanned lunar landing (1966), and first three-man U.S. spacecraft (1968). It was also the launch site for all of the first spacecraft to (separately) fly past each of the planets in the Solar System (1962–1977), the first spacecraft to orbit Mars (1971) and roam its surface (1996), the first American spacecraft to orbit and land on Venus (1978), the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn (2004), and to orbit Mercury (2011), and the first spacecraft to leave the Solar System (1977). Portions of the base have been designated a National Historic Landmark for their association with the early years of the American space program.[7]
Cape Canaveral was known as Cape Kennedy Air Force Station from 1964 to 1974, and as Cape Canaveral Air Force Station from 1974 to 1994 and from 2000 to 2020. The facility was scheduled to be renamed "Cape Canaveral Space Force Station" in March 2020,[8][9] but this ultimately took place on December 9, 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
