Spaceport

A spaceport or cosmodrome is a site for launching or receiving spacecraft, by analogy to a seaport for ships or an airport for aircraft. The word spaceport—and even more so cosmodrome—has traditionally referred to sites capable of launching spacecraft into Earth's orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.^[1] However, rocket launch sites for sub-orbital spaceflights are also sometimes called spaceports, especially as new and proposed facilities for suborbital commercial spaceflight are often branded as "spaceports". Space stations and proposed future lunar bases are also sometimes referred to as spaceports, particularly when envisioned as nodes for further interplanetary travel.^[2]

Spaceports are evolving beyond traditional government-run complexes into multi-functional aerospace hubs, increasingly driven by private companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic. A prominent example is Starbase, a private spaceport operated by SpaceX in Boca Chica, Texas. Starbase serves as the primary development and launch site for Starship, a fully reusable spacecraft designed for missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The facility includes rocket production, launch, and landing infrastructure, and in May 2025, it was officially incorporated as a municipality in Texas—marking the first time a spaceport has become its own city. Starbase is now both a spaceport and a small residential and industrial community, primarily supporting SpaceX operations.

The term rocket launch site refers more broadly to any facility from which rockets are launched. Such facilities typically include one or more launch pads, often surrounded by a safety buffer called a rocket range or missile range, which includes the area rockets are expected to fly over and where components may land. These sites may also include tracking stations to monitor launch progress.^[3]

Major spaceports often feature multiple launch complexes, adapted for different launch vehicle types. For rockets using liquid propellants, storage and sometimes production facilities are necessary, while solid-propellant operations often include on-site processing. Some spaceports also incorporate runways to support horizontal takeoff and landing (HTHL) or horizontal takeoff and vertical landing (HTVL) vehicles.

In January 2025, traffic congestion was reported at U.S. rocket-launch sites due to the rising number of launches, primarily from companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic. Three sites in Florida and California currently handle most U.S. rocket launches.^[4]

The first rockets to reach space were V-2 rockets launched from Peenemünde, Germany in 1944 during World War II.^[5] After the war, 70 complete V-2 rockets were brought to White Sands for test launches, with 47 of them reaching altitudes between 100 km and 213 km.^[6]

The world's first spaceport for orbital and human launches, the Baikonur Cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan, started as a Soviet military rocket range in 1955. It achieved the first orbital flight (Sputnik 1) in October 1957. The exact location of the cosmodrome was initially held secret. Guesses to its location were misdirected by a name in common with a mining town 320 km away. The position became known in 1957 outside the Soviet Union only after U-2 planes had identified the site by following railway lines in the Kazakh SSR, although Soviet authorities did not confirm the location for decades.^[7]

The Baikonur Cosmodrome achieved the first launch of a human into space (Yuri Gagarin) in 1961. The launch complex used, Site 1, has reached a special symbolic significance and is commonly called Gagarin's Start. Baikonur was the primary Soviet cosmodrome, and is still frequently used by Russia under a lease arrangement with Kazakhstan.

In response to the early Soviet successes, the United States built up a major spaceport complex at Cape Canaveral in Florida. A large number of uncrewed flights, as well as the early human flights, were carried out at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. For the Apollo programme, an adjacent spaceport, Kennedy Space Center, was constructed, and achieved the first crewed mission to the lunar surface (Apollo 11) in July 1969. It was the base for all Space Shuttle launches and most of their runway landings. For details on the launch complexes of the two spaceports, see List of Cape Canaveral and Merritt Island launch sites.

The Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana, is France's spaceport, with satellite launches that benefit from the location 5 degrees north of the equator.

In October 2003 the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center achieved the first Chinese human spaceflight.

Breaking with tradition, in June 2004 on a runway at Mojave Air and Space Port, California, a human was for the first time launched to space in a privately funded, suborbital spaceflight, that was intended to pave the way for future commercial spaceflights. The spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, was launched by a carrier airplane taking off horizontally.

At Cape Canaveral, SpaceX in 2015 made the first successful landing and recovery of a first stage used in a vertical satellite launch.^[8]

Rockets can most easily reach satellite orbits if launched near the equator in an easterly direction, as this maximizes use of the Earth's rotational speed (465 m/s at the equator). Such launches also provide a desirable orientation for arriving at a geostationary orbit. For polar orbits and Molniya orbits this does not apply.

In principle, advantages of high altitude launch are reduced vertical distance to travel and a thinner atmosphere for the rocket to penetrate. However, altitude of the launch site is not a driving factor in spaceport placement because most of the delta-v for a launch is spent on achieving the required horizontal orbital speed. The small gain from a few kilometers of extra altitude does not usually off-set the logistical costs of ground transport in mountainous terrain.

Many spaceports have been placed at existing military installations, such as intercontinental ballistic missile ranges, which are not always physically ideal sites for launch.

A rocket launch site is built as far as possible away from major population centers in order to not inconvenience their inhabitants with noise pollution and other undesired industrial activity, as well as mitigate risk to bystanders should a rocket experience a catastrophic failure. In many cases a launch site is built close to major bodies of water to ensure that no components are shed over populated areas, be it by staging or an in-flight failure. Typically a spaceport site is large enough that, should a vehicle explode, it will not endanger human lives or adjacent launch pads.^[9]

Planned sites of spaceports for sub-orbital tourist spaceflight often make use of existing ground infrastructure, including runways. The nature of the local view from 100 km (62 mi) altitude is also a factor to consider.

The space tourism industry (see List of private spaceflight companies) is being targeted by spaceports in numerous locations worldwide. e.g. Spaceport America, New Mexico.

The establishment of spaceports for tourist trips raises legal issues, which are only beginning to be addressed. For example, in Virginia, spaceflight companies are not liable for any accidents in spaceflight, as long as such a warning is displayed to the passengers.^[10][11]

The following is a table of spaceports and launch complexes for vertical launchers with documented achieved launches of humans to space (more than 100 km (62 mi) altitude). The sorting order is spaceport by spaceport according to the time of the first human launch.

Spaceport	Launch complex	Launcher	Spacecraft	Flights	Years
Baikonur Cosmodrome[a]	Site 1	Vostok	Vostok 1–6	6 orbital	1961–1963
	Site 1	Voskhod	Voskhod 1–2	2 orbital	1964–1965
	Site 1, 31	Soyuz, Soyuz-U	Soyuz 1–40 †	37 orbital	1967–1981
	Site 1, 31	Soyuz	Soyuz 18a	1 sub-orb	1975
	Site 1, 31	Soyuz-U, Soyuz-U2	Soyuz-T 2–15	14 orbital	1980–1986
	Site 1	Soyuz-U, Soyuz-U2	Soyuz-TM 2–34	33 orbital	1987–2002
	Site 1	Soyuz-FG	Soyuz-TMA 1–22	22 orbital	2002–2011
	Site 1, 31	Soyuz-FG	Soyuz TMA-M 1–20	20 orbital	2010–2016
	Site 1, 31	Soyuz-FG	Soyuz MS 1–9, 11–13, 15	13 orbital	2016–2019
	Site 1, 31	Soyuz-2	Soyuz MS 16–22, 24	8 orbital	2020–
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station	LC-5	Redstone	Mercury 3–4	2 sub-orb	1961
	LC-14	Atlas	Mercury 6–9	4 orbital	1962–1963
	LC-19	Titan II	Gemini 3–12	10 orbital	1965–1966
	LC-34	Saturn IB	Apollo 7	1 orbital	1968
	LC-41	Atlas V	Boeing Starliner	1 orbital	2024–
	LC-40	Falcon 9	Crew Dragon	1 orbital	2024–
Kennedy Space Center	LC-39	Saturn V	Apollo 8–17	10 Lun/orb	1968–1972
		Saturn IB	Skylab 2–4, Apollo–Soyuz	4 orbital	1973–1975
		Space Shuttle	STS 1-135‡	134 orbital	1981–2011
		Falcon 9	Crew Dragon	11 orbital	2020–
Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center	Area 4	Long March 2F	Shenzhou 5–7, 9–17	12 orbital	2003–
Corn Ranch	Launch Site One	New Shepard	New Shepard	6 sub-orb	2021–

† Three of the Soyuz missions were uncrewed and are not counted (Soyuz 2, Soyuz 20, Soyuz 34).

‡ STS-51-L (Challenger) failed to reach orbit and is not counted. STS-107 (Columbia) reached orbit and is therefore included in the count (disaster struck on re-entry).

• Soyuz T-10a (1983)
• STS-51-L (1986)
• Soyuz MS-10 (2018)

The following is a table of spaceports with a documented achieved launch to orbit. The table is sorted according to the time of the first launch that achieved satellite orbit insertion. The first column gives the geographical location. Operations from a different country are indicated in the fourth column. A launch is counted as one also in cases where the payload consists of multiple satellites.

Spaceport	Location	Years (orbital)	Launches to orbit or inter- planetary	Launch vehicles (operators)	Sources
Baikonur Cosmodrome[a][12]	Kazakhstan	1957–	>1,000	R-7/Soyuz, Kosmos, Proton, Tsyklon, Zenit, Energia, Dnepr, N1, Rokot, Strela	[citation needed]
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station[13]	United States	1958–	>400	Delta, Scout, Atlas, Titan, Saturn, Athena, Falcon 9, Minotaur IV, Vanguard, Juno, Thor, New Glenn]	[citation needed]
Vandenberg Space Force Base[14]	United States	1959–	>700	Delta, Scout, Atlas, Titan, Taurus, Athena, Minotaur, Falcon 9, Thor, Firefly Alpha	[15]
Wallops Flight Facility[b][16]	United States	1961–1985	19	Scout	6[16]+13[16]
Kapustin Yar Cosmodrome[17]	Russia	1962–2008	85	Kosmos	[17][citation needed]
CIEES[18]	French Algeria	1965–1967	4	Diamant A (France)	Diamant
Plesetsk Cosmodrome[19]	Russia	1966–	>1,500	R-7/Soyuz, Kosmos, Tsyklon-3, Rokot, Angara, Start	[19]
Broglio Space Centre[16]	Kenya	1967–1988	9	Scout (ASI and Sapienza, Italy)	Broglio
Kennedy Space Center[13]	United States	1967–	187	17 Saturn, 135 Space Shuttle, 63 Falcon 9, 11 Falcon Heavy, 1 SLS	Saturn, STS, F9
Woomera Prohibited Area[16]	Australia	1967, 1971	2	Redstone (WRESAT), Black Arrow (UK Prospero X-3), Europa	WRESAT, X-3
Uchinoura Space Center[16]	Japan	1970–	31	27 Mu, 3 Epsilon, 1 SS-520-5	[16] M, ε, S
Guiana Space Centre[20]	French Guiana	1970–	318	7 Diamant, 227 Ariane, 16 Soyuz-2, 11 Vega	see 4 rockets
Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center[16]	China	1970–	121	2 LM1, 3 LM2A, 20 LM2C, 36 LM2D, 13 LM2F, 3 LM4B, 5 LM4C, 3 LM11	See 8 rockets
Tanegashima Space Center[16]	Japan	1975–	93	6 N-I, 8 N-II, 9 H-I, 6 H-II, 50 H-IIA, 9 H-IIB, 5 H3	see 6 rockets
Satish Dhawan Space Centre[16]	India	1979–	93	4 SLV, 4 ASLV, 60 PSLV, 16GSLV, 7 LVM3, 2 SSLV	List SDSC
Xichang Satellite Launch Center[21]	China	1984–	183	Long March: 6 LM2C, 5 LM2E, 11 LM3, 25 LM3A, 42 LM3B, 15 LM3C	See 6 rockets
Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center[22]	China	1988–	62	Long March: 16 LM2C, 2 LM2D, 2 LM4A, 25 LM4B, 15 LM4C, 2 LM6	See 6 rockets
Palmachim Airbase[16]	Israel	1988–	8	Shavit	Shavit
Various airport runways (Balls 8, Stargazer)	Various	1990–	39	Pegasus	Pegasus
Svobodny Cosmodrome[23]	Russia	1997–2006	5	Start-1	[23]
Delta-class submarine	Barents Sea	1998, 2006	2	Shtil' (Russia), Volna-O	Shtil'
Odyssey mobile platform	Pacific Ocean	1999–2014	32	Zenit-3SL (Sea Launch)	Sea Launch
Pacific Spaceport Complex[24][25]	United States	2001–	3	1 Athena, 2 Minotaur IV	Kodiak
Yasny Cosmodrome[26]	Russia	2006–	10	Dnepr	Dnepr
Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport[b][27]	United States	2006–	12	5 Minotaur I, 6 Antares, 1 Minotaur V	MARS
Omelek, Kwajalein Atoll	Marshall Islands	2008–2009	5	5 Falcon 1 (US)	Falcon 1
Semnan Space Center[16][28]	Iran	2009–	26	Safir, Simorgh, Zuljanah	Safir
Sohae Satellite Launching Station	North Korea	2012–	2	Unha-3	K3-U2[29]
Naro Space Center[30]	South Korea	2013–	2	Naro-1, Nuri	Naro-1, Nuri
Vostochny Cosmodrome	Russia	2016–	8	8 Soyuz-2	Vostochny
Wenchang Satellite Launch Center	China	2016–	23	Long March: 9 LM5, 12 LM7, 2 LM8	See 3 rockets
Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1	New Zealand	2018–	21	21 Electron	Electron (rocket)
Dongfang Spaceport [zh]	Yellow sea, East China sea	2019–	6	4 Long March 11, 1 SD3, 1 CERES-1 [zh]	See 3 rockets
Shahroud Space Center	Iran	2020–	7	3 Qased, 4 Qaem 100	[31][32]

The following table shows spaceports with documented achieved launches of humans to at least 100 km altitude, starting from a horizontal runway. All the flights were sub-orbital.

Spaceport	Carrier aircraft	Spacecraft	Flights above 100 km	Years
Edwards Air Force Base	B-52	X-15	2	1963
Mojave Air and Space Port	White Knight	SpaceShipOne	3	2004

There have been some extraterrestrial sites of space launches. Mostly from the Moon, such as the first, by the Apollo program return launches from the respective moonbases. But also from asteroids.

Spaceports have been proposed for locations on the Moon, Mars, orbiting the Earth, at Sun-Earth and Earth-Moon Lagrange points, and at other locations in the Solar System. Human-tended outposts on the Moon or Mars, for example, will be spaceports by definition.^[33] The 2012 Space Studies Program of the International Space University studied the economic benefit of a network of spaceports throughout the solar system beginning from Earth and expanding outwardly in phases, within its team project Operations And Service Infrastructure for Space (OASIS).^[34] Its analysis claimed that the first phase, placing the "Node 1" spaceport with space tug services in low Earth orbit (LEO), would be commercially profitable and reduce transportation costs to geosynchronous orbit by as much as 44% (depending on the launch vehicle). The second phase would add a Node 2 spaceport on the lunar surface to provide services including lunar ice mining and delivery of rocket propellants back to Node 1. This would enable lunar surface activities and further reduce transportation costs within and out from cislunar space. The third phase would add a Node 3 spaceport on the Martian moon Phobos to enable refueling and resupply prior to Mars surface landings, missions beyond Mars, and return trips to Earth. In addition to propellant mining and refueling, the network of spaceports could provide services such as power storage and distribution, in-space assembly and repair of spacecraft, communications relay, shelter, construction and leasing of infrastructure, maintaining spacecraft positioned for future use, and logistics.^[35]

Space launch facilities have been colonial developments and have also been impacting its surroundings by destroying or polluting their environment,^[36][37] creating precarious cleanup situations.^[38]

• Media related to Spaceports at Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionary definition of spaceport at Wiktionary
• U.S. Spaceports Online Reference Guide
• Center for Strategic and International Studies: Spaceports of the World
• Sheboygan Spaceport’s Future – Sea to Space
• HighBeam Research: Spaceflight of fancy: Lawmakers question fiscal feasibility of Southern New Mexico's proposed spaceport; supporters count on jobs. Deprecated link archived 25 January 2013 at archive.today
• Spaceport Earth: The Reinvention of Spaceflight Spaceport Earth: The Reinvention of Spaceflight - categories | Overlook Press