The Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakh: Байқоңыр ғарыш айлағы, Bayqoñır ğarısh aylağı; Russian: Космодром Байконур, Kosmodrom Baykonur), also called Tjuratam, is the first and largest operational space launch facility in the world. It is located in the desert steppes of Kazakhstan, about 200 kilometers east of the Aral Sea and north of the Syr Darya river, near Tjuratam railway station. The facility derives its name from a wider area known as Baikonur and is also traditionally linked with the town of Zhezqazghan. It is leased by the Kazakh government to Russia and is managed by the Russian Federal Space Agency. It was originally built by the Soviet Union in the late 1950s as the base of operations for its ambitious space program, but fell into decline in the years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.
Vostok 1, the first manned spacecraft in human history, was launched from one of Baikonur's launch pads, which is presently known as the Gagarin's Start.
The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is the NASA space vehicle launch facility and Launch Control Center (spaceport) on Merritt Island, Brevard County, Florida, United States. The site is near Cape Canaveral, midway between Miami and Jacksonville, Florida. It is 55 kilometers long and around 10 kilometers wide. A total of 13,500 people work at the site as of 2008. There is a visitor center and public tours; KSC is a major tourist destination for visitors to Florida. Because much of KSC is a restricted area and only nine percent of the land is developed, the site also serves as an important wildlife sanctuary; Mosquito Lagoon, Indian River, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and Canaveral National Seashore are also features of this area.
Operations are currently controlled from Launch Complex 39, the location of the Vehicle Assembly Building. The two launch pads are 3 miles (5 km) to the east of the assembly building. The KSC Industrial Area, where many of the Center's support facilities and the administrative Headquarters Building are located, are found 5 miles (8 km) south.
Kennedy Space Center's only launch operations are at Launch Complex 39. All other launch operations take place at the adjacent Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), which is operated by the US Air Force.
The Guiana Space Centre, or more commonly, Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) is a French spaceport near Kourou in French Guiana. Operational since 1968, it is particularly suitable as a location for a spaceport due to its proximity to the equator, and the fact that launches in the favourable direction are over water. The European Space Agency, the French space agency CNES, and the commercial Arianespace company conduct launches from Kourou.
The location was selected in 1964 to become the spaceport of France. When the European Space Agency (ESA) was founded in 1975, France offered to share Kourou with ESA. Commercial launches are bought also by non-European companies. ESA pays two thirds of the spaceport's annual budget, and has also financed the upgrades made during the development of the Ariane launchers.
Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC) (simplified Chinese: 酒泉卫星发射中心; traditional Chinese: 酒泉衛星發射中心; pinyin: Jiǔquán Wèixīng Fāshè Zhōngxīn) is a People's Republic of China space vehicle launch facility (spaceport) in the Gobi desert, Inner Mongolia, located about 1,600 km from Beijing.
It was founded in 1958, making it PRC's first of three spaceports. More Chinese launches have occurred at Jiuquan than anywhere else. As with all Chinese launch facilities it is remote and generally closed to foreigners. It is named as such since Jiuquan is the nearest urban centre, although Jiuquan is in the nearby province of Gansu.
The Satellite Launch Center is a part of Dongfeng space city，also known as Base 10 or Dongfeng base, which also includes PLAAF test flight facilities, a space museum and a martyr's cemetery.
JSLC is usually used to launch vehicles into lower and medium orbits with large orbital inclination angles, as well as testing medium to long-range missiles. Its facilities are state of the art and provide support to every phase of a satellite launch campaign. The site includes the Technical Center, the Launch Complex, the Launch Control Center, the Mission Command and Control Center and various other logistical support systems.
The center covers a massive 2800 km and may have housing for as many as 20 000 people. The facilities and launch support equipment were likely modelled on Soviet counterparts and the Soviet Union, at least in the early 1960s, may have provided technical support to Jiuquan.
The launch center has been the focus of many of China's ventures into space, including their first satellite Dong Fang Hong 1 in 1970, and their first manned space mission Shenzhou 5 on October 15, 2003.
Shenzhou 6, the second human spaceflight of China, launched on 12 October 2005 on a Long March rocket from JSLC.
The Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SHAR) (सतीश धवन अंतरिक्ष केंद्र) is the launch centre for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It is located in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, India and is also referred to as Sriharikota. The centre is located 80 kilometres north of Chennai in South India. It was originally called Sriharikota Range, and was sometime known as Sriharikota Launching Range. The centre was renamed to its present name in 2002 after the death of ISRO's former chairman Satish Dhawan.
The centre became operational in October, 1971 when an RH-125 sounding rocket was launched. The first attempted launch of an orbital satellite, Rohini 1A aboard a Satellite Launch Vehicle, took place in 1979, but due to a failure in thrust vectoring of the rocket's second stage, the satellite's orbit decayed.
The SHAR facility now consists of two launch pads, with the second built recently. The second launch pad was used for launches beginning in 2005 and is a universal launch pad, accommodating all the launch vehicles used by ISRO. The two launch pads will allow multiple launches in a single year, which was not possible earlier.
India's lunar orbiter Chandrayaan 1 was launched from the centre last October 22, 2008.
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Several centuries earlier -- legend says about 1500 AD, around the middle of the Ming Dynasty -- a Chinese stargazer named Wan Hu dreamed of going where no man had gone before and set out to turn that dream into space age reality.
According to the legend, Wan, a local government official, was obsessed by the stars and planned a rather harebrained scheme to get himself closer to them.
Wan tied 47 rockets filled with explosives to the chair in which he was sitting and ignited them. There was a large explosion, but when the smoke cleared Wan Hu was gone and never seen again.
