Pacific Spaceport, Kodiak Island

Pacific Spaceport, Kodiak Island

by | Oct 14, 2023

The Pacific Spaceport Complex is a launch facility for sub-orbital and orbital launch vehicles located on Kodiak Island, about 180 miles (290 km) southeast of King Salmon and 25.5 miles (41 km) south of Kodiak, Alaska. The facility is owned and operated by the Alaska Aerospace Corporation, a public corporation of the State of Alaska.

In 1991, the Alaska Aerospace Development Corporation was established by the Alaska state legislature, and plans were developed for the spaceport, known at the time as the Alaska Orbital Launch Complex. Construction on the site began in January 1998, and the first launch took place in August 1998. In August 2014, the launch tower, payload processing facility, and integrated processing facility were damaged during a launch failure. While undergoing repairs, the spaceport was renamed the “Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska”, and re-dedicated on 13 August 2016.

The Kodiak spaceport has two launch pads with a mission control center connected by high-speed data links. There is a clean room for preparing satellites for launch, a fully enclosed 17-story-tall rocket assembly building, and two independent range and telemetry systems. The complex sits on 3,700 acres (1500 ha) of state-owned land. Launchpad 1 is designed for orbital launches, while launchpad 2 is intended for sub-orbital flights. In 2010, Alaska Aerospace Corporation had a concept plan for a third launch pad to be built, which could allow the facility to support quick launches of satellites. Read more here and here. Explore more of Pacific Spaceport here:

About the background graphic

This ‘warming stripe’ graphic is a visual representation of the change in global temperature from 1850 (top) to 2022 (bottom). Each stripe represents the average global temperature for one year. The average temperature from 1971-2000 is set as the boundary between blue and red. The color scale goes from -0.7°C to +0.7°C. The data are from the UK Met Office HadCRUT4.6 dataset. 

Credit: Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading). Click here for more information about the #warmingstripes.

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