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Vandenberg Air Force Base is home to NASA's west coast launch facility. Located along California's central coast between
Los Angeles and San Francisco, it was once even considered for a second Shuttle launch and landing site.
Vandenberg occupies 86-thousand acres of arid, desert landscape. It is nestled between the Pacific Ocean to the west,
and the foothills of the Santa Ynez mountains to the east. The barren, sandy area disguises that this is one of North America's gateways to the universe.
You may ask why NASA needs a launch site on the west coast. Well, there's really a good reason. Plenty of launches take place on the east coast,
from Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. However,
launching a spacecraft north or south from the Cape would require it to fly over populated land,
which NASA wants to avoid. So launches from Cape Canaveral tend to be spacecraft requiring a west-east orbit.
Vandenberg's location allows for launches due south over the Pacific, away from the population.
Certain kinds of spacecraft, especially Earth-observing and weather forecasting satellites, require a north-south orbit.
Vandenberg is the perfect launch site for these types of missions.
NASA has its own facilities on the base, including Space Launch Complex 2, a Tracking Data and Telemetry system,
and Building 1610 for spacecraft processing. But the Air Force's other resources and facilities are available for NASA's use.
Most NASA payloads launched from Vandenberg are carried on the Boeing Delta II launch vehicle,
because Space Launch Complex 2 is specifically configured for the Delta II. But occasionally,
NASA has made use of Lockheed Martin's Atlas II and Titan II, and Orbital Science's Taurus and Pegasus.
So the next time you see a satellite photo of a hurricane – or you read about changes in our ozone layer,
or any other Earth science discoveries – chances are, the satellite providing this information was launched from Vandenberg.
It plays a very important role in NASA's quest to understand and improve life on Earth.