| Mojave Spaceport |
Article Index for Mojave |
Limousines in Mojave |
Website Links For Mojave |
Information AboutMojave Spaceport |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT MOJAVE SPACEPORT | |
| airports in california | |
| airports in the mojave desert | |
| kern county, california | |
| spaceports | |
The Mojave Spaceport , also known as the '''Mojave Airport and Civilian Aerospace Test Center''', is located in Mojave, California , at an elevation of 2,791 feet. It is the first facility to be licensed in the United States for horizontal launches of Reusable Spacecraft , being certified as a Spaceport by the Federal Aviation Administration on June 17 , 2004 . It is the only spaceport from which there have been privately-funded Human Spaceflight s. ACTIVITIES Besides being a general-use public airport, Mojave has three main areas of activity, flight testing, space industry development, and aircraft heavy maintenance and storage. Flight testing Flight testing activities have been centered at Mojave since the early 1970s, due to the lack of populated areas surrounding the airport. It is also favored for this purpose due to its proximity to the Edwards Air Force Base , where the airspace is restricted from ground level to an unlimited height, and where there is a supersonic corridor. Mojave is also the home of the National Test Pilot School Space industry development Beginning with the Rotary Rocket program, Mojave became a focus for small companies seeking a place to develop space access technologies. Mojave Spaceport has been a test site for several teams in the Ansari X Prize , most notably SpaceShipOne, which conducted the first privately funded human sub-orbital flight on June 21 , 2004. Other groups based at the Mojave Spaceport include XCOR Aerospace , Masten Space Systems , Orbital Sciences Corporation , and Interorbital Systems . Aircraft heavy maintenance and storage The Mojave airport is also known as a storage location for commercial airliners. Numerous large Boeing , McDonnell Douglas , Lockheed , and Airbus aircraft owned by major airlines are stored at Mojave. Some aircraft reach the end of their useful lifetime and are scrapped at Mojave, while others are refurbished and returned to active service. HISTORY The Mojave Airport was first opened in 1935 as a small, rural airfield serving the local gold and silver mining industry. In July, 1942, the U.S. Marine Corps took over the field and vastly expanded it as the Marine Corps Auxiliary Air Station (MCAAS) Mojave. Many of the Corps' WWII aces received their gunnery training at Mojave. With the end of WWII, MCAAS was disestablished in 1946, and became instead a U.S. Navy airfield. At the end of 1953, the USMC reopened MCAAS Mojave as an auxiliary field to MCAS El Toro . In 1961, after the USMC transferred operations to MCAS El Centro , Kern County obtained title to the airport. In February, 1972, the East Kern Airport District was formed to administer the airport; EKAD maintains the airport to this day. FIRST FLIGHTS AND SIGNIFICANT EVENTS |
|
|