Mojave Space Center

The Mojave Space Center is a space launch complex rated for civilian, corporate, military, and other private space launches in Mojave, California, United States. It is an FAA-licensed spaceport located on 20,000 acres (8,100 hectares) of state land in the Tehachapi Pass of the Tehachapi Mountains, in Kern County, California directly adjacent to several corporate and U.S. military facilities that specialize in space industry. It lies approximately 95 miles (152.9 km) north of downtown Los Angeles. It is the world's largest spaceport in terms of size of facility in the world.

It has been billed as "the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport," designed and constructed specifically for commercial users that had not previously been an airport or federal infrastructure of any kind. The site is built to accommodate both vertical and horizontal launch aerospace vehicles, as well as an array of non-aerospace events and commercial activities. Mojave Space Center is owned and operated by the State of California, via a state agency, the California Space Authority. Current tenants of the spaceport include Vega Aerospace, Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, and many others.

Mojave Space Center was officially declared open in July 2005, the visitor center in Mojave became fully accessible to the general public in December 2009, and after Vega Aerospace completed the interior buildout, the entire facility was deemed ready for operations in October 2013. Visitors can book tours from Visit Mojave or the visitors centers in Tehachapi or Mojave.

It is located near the Civilian Aerospace Test Center, also located in Mojave, which was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration as a spaceport in 2004. The CATC was the first facility to be licensed in the United States for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft.

It is also located near Edwards Air Force Base which is a United States Air Force installation located in Kern County in Edwards, California, about 22 miles (35 km) northeast of Lancaster, 15 miles (24 km) of Rosamond and 5.5 miles (8.9 km) south of California City. It is the home of the Air Force Test Center, Air Force Test Pilot School, and NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center. It is the Air Force Materiel Command center for conducting and supporting research and development of flight, as well as testing and evaluating aerospace systems from concept to combat. It also hosts many test activities conducted by America's commercial aerospace industry. It shares many activities with the United States Space Command. Notable occurrences at Edwards include Chuck Yeager's flight that broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1, test flights of the North American X-15, the first landings of the Space Shuttle, and the 1986 around-the-world flight of the Rutan Voyager.

Yet another nearby facility is United States Air Force Plant 42 which is a classified aircraft manufacturing plant owned by the United States Air Force in the Antelope Valley, about 60 miles (97 km) from downtown Los Angeles. It is also used by NASA/JPL, the NRO, and other space organizations. Plant 42 shares a runway with Palmdale Regional Airport (PMD). It also home to Skunkworks, as well as, the location of the creation of all space shuttle orbiters.

Gattaca rocket launch.