Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41), sometimes referred to as "Slick Forty-one," is one of two launch sites at the Integrate-Transfer-Launch Complex in

Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida. Headquartered at the nearby Patrick Space Force Base, the sta ...

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

. Originally built as Launch Complex 41 (LC-41), it and the neighboring Space Launch Complex 40 were designed for the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

Titan III Titan was a family of United States expendable rockets used between 1959 and 2005. The Titan I and Titan II were part of the US Air Force's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fleet until 1987. The space launch vehicle versions contribu ...

rocket program, where it launched the

Titan IIIC The Titan IIIC was an expendable launch system used by the United States Air Force from 1965 until 1982. It was the first Titan (rocket family), Titan booster to feature large solid rocket motors and was planned to be used as a launcher for the D ...

in the 1960s and the

Titan IIIE The Titan IIIE or Titan 3E, also known as the Titan III-Centaur, was an American expendable launch system. Launched seven times between 1974 and 1977, it enabled several high-profile NASA missions, including the Voyager and Viking planetary pro ...

in the 1970s. In the 1990s, the Air Force and

Martin Marietta The Martin Marietta Corporation was an American company founded in 1961 through the merger of Glenn L. Martin Company and American-Marietta Corporation. In 1995, it merged with Lockheed Corporation to form Lockheed Martin. History Martin Marie ...

upgraded the pad for use by the Titan III's successor, the

Titan IV Titan IV was a family of heavy-lift space launch vehicles developed by Martin Marietta and operated by the United States Air Force from 1989 to 2005. Launches were conducted from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida and Vandenberg Air Forc ...

. During the early 2000s, SLC-41 underwent modifications by

Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American Arms industry, defense and aerospace manufacturer with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta on March 15, 1995. It is headquartered in North ...

in order to support the launch operations of the

Atlas V Atlas V is an expendable launch system and the fifth major version in the Atlas (rocket family), Atlas launch vehicle family. It was developed by Lockheed Martin and has been operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA) since 2006. Primarily used to ...

. It was later transferred to

United Launch Alliance United Launch Alliance, LLC (ULA) is an American launch service provider formed in December 2006 as a joint venture between Lockheed Martin Space and Boeing Defense, Space & Security. The company designs, assembles, sells and launches rockets ...

(ULA)—a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

between Lockheed Martin and

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

—who continues to use the pad today for launches of the Atlas V and its successor,

Vulcan Centaur Vulcan Centaur is a heavy-lift launch vehicle developed and operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA). It is a two-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle consisting of the Vulcan first stage and the Centaur second stage. Replacing ULA's Atlas V and Del ...

History

Titan IIIC and IIIE (1965–1977)

Launch Complex 41 was originally built as part of the Integrate-Transfer-Launch Complex (ITL), intended to launch

rockets with

solid rocket boosters A solid rocket booster (SRB) is a solid propellant motor used to provide thrust in spacecraft launches from initial launch through the first ascent. Many launch vehicles, including the Atlas V, SLS and Space Shuttle, have used SRBs to give launch ...

in a method to enable a rapid launch rate. The ITL consisted of a Titan assembly facility at the

Vertical Integration Building The Vertical Integration Building was a building at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, located at the far south end of the industrial area supporting SLC-40 and SLC-41. The building was one of the facilities of the Integrate-Transfer ...

(demolished in 2006), an SRB attachment facility at the Solid Motor Assembly Building (now used by

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

to process

Falcon 9 Falcon 9 is a Reusable launch system#Partial reusable launch systems, partially reusable, two-stage-to-orbit, medium-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured in the United States by SpaceX. The first Falcon 9 launch was on June 4, 2010, an ...

payloads), and two pads at

Launch Complex 40 Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40), sometimes referred to as "Slick Forty," is one of two launch pad, launch pads located at the Integrate-Transfer-Launch Complex in Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. It initially opened as Launch Complex ...

(LC-40, now SLC-40) and LC-41, all connected by the first rail line at the Cape. The facilities were completed in 1964, and the first launch from LC-41 was of a

carrying four separate payloads on December 21, 1965. Throughout the remainder of the 1960s, LC-41 was used to launch 10 Titan IIICs, the entirety of them being military payloads such as Vela nuclear detection satellites and Lincoln Experimental Satellites. The last Titan IIIC launch from LC-41 took place in May 1969, launching Vela satellites OPS-6909 and OPS-6911, the later of which would detect a double flash in the southern

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...

and instigate the

Vela incident The Vela incident was an unidentified double flash of light detected by an American Vela Hotel satellite on 22 September 1979 near the South African territory of Prince Edward Islands in the Indian Ocean, roughly midway between Africa and Antar ...

ten years later. All remaining launches of the rocket were made from LC-40. In the early 1970s, LC-41 underwent a modification to launch the

, which replaced the

Transtage Transtage, given the United States Air Force designation SSB-10A, was an American upper stage used on Titan III rockets, developed by Martin Marietta and Aerojet. History Transtage was developed in anticipation of a requirement to launch milita ...

upper stage of the IIIC with a

Centaur A centaur ( ; ; ), occasionally hippocentaur, also called Ixionidae (), is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse that was said to live in the mountains of Thessaly. In one version o ...

. With the exception of its inaugural flight in February 1974, every launch from the pad in this era contained a

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

payload. Those satellites were the two

Helios probes ''Helios-A'' and ''Helios-B'' (after launch renamed ' and ') are a pair of probes that were launched into heliocentric orbit to study solar processes. As a joint venture between German Aerospace Center (DLR) and NASA, the probes were launch ...

sent to study the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

(setting a proximity record only broken by the

Parker Solar Probe The Parker Solar Probe (PSP; previously Solar Probe, Solar Probe Plus or Solar Probe+) is a NASA space probe launched in 2018 to make observations of the Stellar corona, Sun's outer corona. It used repeated Gravity assist, gravity assists from ...

), the two

Viking Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

probes sent to orbit and land on

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

, and the two

Voyager Voyager may refer to: Computing and communications * LG Voyager, a mobile phone model manufactured by LG Electronics * NCR Voyager, a computer platform produced by NCR Corporation * Voyager (computer worm), a computer worm affecting Oracle ...

spacecraft that flew by

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant, with an average radius of about 9 times that of Earth. It has an eighth the average density of Earth, but is over 95 tim ...

Uranus Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gaseous cyan-coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a Supercritical fluid, supercritical phase of matter, which astronomy calls "ice" or Volatile ( ...

, and

Neptune Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun. It is the List of Solar System objects by size, fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 t ...

. The Titan III facility at Complex 41 was deactivated in late 1977, following September's launch of

Voyager 1 ''Voyager 1'' is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and the interstellar medium, interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. It was launched 16 days afte ...

Titan IV (1989–1999)

In 1986, the existing mobile service tower and umbilical tower at LC-41 were both stripped down to their main structural components as part of a renovation conducted by Titan manufacturer

. This was done as part of their "tear-out and refurbish" contracts, which modified and prepared the ITL for its new rocket configuration: LC-40 would get converted to use the civilian-based

Commercial Titan III The Commercial Titan III, also known as CT-3 or CT-III, was an American expendable launch system, developed by Martin Marietta during the late 1980s and flown four times during the early 1990s. It was derived from the Titan 34D, and was originall ...

, while LC-41 would be used for the military-focused

. Additionally, Titan IV processing would go through the newly-constructed Solid Motor Assembly Readiness Facility (now used by ULA in the assembly of

) prior to launch. The maiden flight of the Titan IV occurred on June 14, 1989, carrying USA-39 for the

. Similarly to most other Titan launches, all 10 launches of the Titan IV from LC-41 were classified military payloads, most going into

geostationary transfer orbit In space mission design, a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) or geosynchronous transfer orbit is a highly elliptical type of geocentric orbit, usually with a perigee as low as low Earth orbit (LEO) and an apogee as high as geostationary orbit ...

. The Titan family of the 1980s and 1990s was marred by its price in the eyes of commercial customers, who instead opted to use cheaper launch vehicles like

Delta II Delta II was an expendable launch system, originally designed and built by McDonnell Douglas, and sometimes known as the Thorad Delta 1. Delta II was part of the Delta rocket family, derived directly from the Delta 3000, and entered service in ...

and

Ariane 4 The Ariane 4 was a European expendable rocket, expendable launch vehicle in the Ariane (rocket family), Ariane family, developed by the (CNES), the Government of France, French space agency, for the European Space Agency (ESA). The manufacturi ...

. Following Lockheed's merger with Martin Marietta in 1995,

eventually decided to begin the process of retiring the Titan program in favor of their cheaper

Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of world map, maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth. Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets. Atlases have traditio ...

line. With any remaining Titan IV launches to be made from LC-40, the last Titan launch from LC-41 was on 9 April 1999, when a Titan IVB launched the USA-142

early warning satellite An early warning satellite is an artificial satellite that detects ballistic missile launches in order to provide rapid early warning of a potential missile attack. Modern examples are often multi-purpose vehicles also supporting other wide-area ...

. The

IUS ''Ius'' or ''Jus'' (Latin, plural ''iura'') in ancient Rome was a right to which a citizen (''civis'') was entitled by virtue of his citizenship (''civitas''). The ''iura'' were specified by laws, so ''ius'' sometimes meant law. As one went to ...

upper stage failed to separate, leaving the payload stranded in a useless GTO orbit.

Atlas V and Vulcan Centaur (2002–present)

After the last Titan launch, LC-41 was renovated by Lockheed Martin and the Air Force to support the

as part of the

Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle National Security Space Launch (NSSL) is a program of the United States Space Force (USSF) intended to assure access to space for United States Department of Defense and other United States government payloads. The program is managed by the Assure ...

program, getting rechristened as SLC-41 in the process. The old launch tower and mobile service structure were demolished, while the new Vertical Integration Facility was built for the assembly of the new launch vehicle. Additionally, the rail lines going towards the pad were renovated to support the assembly and transportation of the Atlas V and it's mobile launcher platform for liftoff. SLC-41 was the site of the first-ever Atlas V launch on August 21, 2002, lifting Hot Bird 6, a

Eutelsat Eutelsat S.A. is a French satellite operator. Providing coverage over the entire European continent, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas, it has been the world's third-largest satellite operator in terms of revenues. Its subsidiary E ...

geostationary communications spacecraft built around a

Spacebus Spacebus is a satellite bus produced at the Cannes Mandelieu Space Center in France by Thales Alenia Space. Spacebuses are typically used for geostationary communications satellites, and seventy-four have been launched since development started ...

3000B3 bus. Over the years of the Atlas V era, SLC-41 was used to launch various noteworthy payloads for various agencies such as NASA and the Air Force. These include the ''

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter The ''Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter'' (''MRO'') is a spacecraft designed to search for the existence of water on Mars and provide support for missions to Mars, as part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. It was launched from Cape Canaveral on Au ...

'' in August 2005, the ''

New Horizons ''New Horizons'' is an Interplanetary spaceflight, interplanetary space probe launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institut ...

'' spacecraft to

Pluto Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of Trans-Neptunian object, bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Su ...

in January 2006, the ''Juno'' mission to

in August 2011, and two of the

rover missions;

Mars Science Laboratory Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a robotic spacecraft, robotic space probe mission to Mars launched by NASA on November 26, 2011, which successfully landed ''Curiosity (rover), Curiosity'', a Mars rover, in Gale (crater), Gale Crater on Augus ...

in November 2011, and

Mars 2020 Mars 2020 is a NASA mission that includes the rover ''Perseverance (rover), Perseverance'', the now-retired small robotic helicopter ''Ingenuity (helicopter), Ingenuity'', and associated delivery systems, as part of the Mars Exploration Progra ...

in July 2020. Other notable payloads to be mentioned are various launches of the Boeing X-37B for the Air Force throughout the 2010s, and a couple of Cyngus flights to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

in 2015 and 2016 following the failure of Cygnus Orb 3. In 2005, it was announced that a joint venture would form between Lockheed Martin and

that would combine Atlas V operations at SLC-41 with Delta II and

Delta IV Delta IV was a group of five expendable launch systems in the Delta rocket family. It flew 45 missions from 2002 to 2024. Originally designed by Boeing's Defense, Space and Security division for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) p ...

operations at SLC-17 and SLC-37 respectively, following issues with profit abounding with competition between the two. This transfer in operation was made official in December 2006, with the formation of

. The first launch from SLC-41 under ULA came in March 2007 with a variety of

Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the six U.S. armed services: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, ...

payloads lifting off from an Atlas V. In 2011, the idea of rebuilding a

launch tower A service structure is a permanent steel framework or tower erected on a rocket launch pad that allows assembly, servicing, and crew onboarding of the launch vehicle prior to liftoff. In NASA launches at the Kennedy Space Center, astronauts e ...

at SLC-41 began to get proposed following

Sierra Nevada Corporation Sierra Nevada Corporation (also styled SNC) is an American aerospace, defense, electronics, engineering and manufacturing corporation that specializes in aircraft modification, integration and other space technologies. The corporation contracts ...

and Boeing's decisions to have the Atlas V launch their respective

Dream Chaser Dream Chaser is an American reusable lifting-body spaceplane developed by Sierra Space. Originally intended as a crewed vehicle, the Dream Chaser Space System is set to be produced after the Dream Chaser Cargo System cargo variant is opera ...

and

CST-100 Starliner The Boeing Starliner (or CST-100) is a spacecraft designed to transport crew to and from the International Space Station (ISS) and other low-Earth-orbit destinations. Developed by Boeing under NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP), it consists o ...

spacecraft into orbit. Proposals turned into plans in 2014, following Boeing's winning of a contract as part of NASA's

Commercial Crew Program The Commercial Crew Program (CCP) provides Private spaceflight, commercially operated human spaceflight, crew transportation service to and from the International Space Station (ISS) under contract to NASA, conducting crew rotations between t ...

to launch astronauts to the ISS. Pad modifications at SLC-41 began in September 2015 to support

human spaceflight Human spaceflight (also referred to as manned spaceflight or crewed spaceflight) is spaceflight with a crew or passengers aboard a spacecraft, often with the spacecraft being operated directly by the onboard human crew. Spacecraft can also be ...

to support Starliner, including the addition of a launch service tower to provide access to the capsule for "pre-launch processing, crew access, and safety egress systems should the need to evacuate Starliner on the pad occur". The first launch utilizing the newly-built launch tower came on December 20, 2019 with the launch of the

Boeing Orbital Flight Test The Boeing Starliner Orbital Flight Test (also known as Boe-OFT) was the first orbital mission of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, conducted by Boeing as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The mission was planned to be an eight-day test ...

. This was followed up with the first crewed launch to be made from SLC-41, which occurred on June 5, 2024 with the

Boeing Crew Flight Test Boeing Crew Flight Test (Boe-CFT) was the first crewed mission of the Boeing Starliner capsule. Launched on 5 June 2024, the mission flew a crew of two NASA astronauts, Barry E. Wilmore and Sunita Williams, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Sta ...

and carried astronauts Barry Wilmore and

Sunita Williams Sunita Lyn "Suni" Williams ( Pandya; born September 19, 1965) is an American astronaut and a retired U.S. Navy officer. Williams served aboard the International Space Station as a participant in Expedition 14, a flight engineer for Expedition ...

into orbit. This was the first crewed launch from

since

Apollo 7 Apollo 7 (October 11–22, 1968) was the first crewed flight in NASA's Apollo program, and saw the resumption of human spaceflight by the agency after the fire that had killed the three Apollo 1 astronauts during a launch rehearsal test ...

in 1968 and made SLC-41 the seventh pad in the Cape Canaveral area to launch astronauts into space. During the late 2010s and the early 2020s, SLC-41, the VIF, and the SMARF (which was renamed to the Spaceflight Processing Operations Center in 2019) underwent minor modifications to support

, the successor to the Atlas V and Delta IV. This was in part due to the Atlas V using the

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

-built

RD-180 The RD-180 () is a rocket engine that was designed and built in Russia. It features a dual combustion chamber, dual-nozzle design and is fueled by a RP-1/ LOX mixture. The RD-180 is derived from the RD-170 line of rocket engines, which were use ...

as its first stage engine, which drew concern among

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

following the

2014 annexation of Crimea In February and March 2014, Russia invaded the Crimea, Crimean Peninsula, part of Ukraine, and then annexed it. This took place in the relative power vacuum immediately following the Revolution of Dignity. It marked the beginning of the Russ ...

and the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

in 2022. As the Atlas V still had numerous pending launches (mainly for Starliner and Kuiper satellites as payloads), SLC-41's modifications were made to allow both rockets to take off from the pad, rather than a more traditional renovation like what was seen at Vandenberg's SLC-3E. The first Vulcan launch to be made from the pad occurred on January 8, 2024, carrying Peregine Mission One to the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

as part of NASA's

Commercial Lunar Payload Services Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is a NASA program to hire companies to send small robotic landers and rovers to the Moon. Most landing sites are near the lunar south pole where they will scout for lunar resources, test in situ resource ...

Launch history

Statistics

List of launches

Titan III and IV

All launches operated by the

Pre-Starliner Atlas V

All launches from 2002 to 2006 operated by

. All launches since 2007 operated by

Starliner-era Atlas V and Vulcan Centaur

All launches operated by

Upcoming launches

Gallery

File:Titan 3E Centaur launches Voyager 2.jpg, A Titan IIIE launching

Voyager 2 ''Voyager 2'' is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, as a part of the Voyager program. It was launched on a trajectory towards the gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and enabled further encounters with the ice giants (Uranus and ...

from LC-41 in 1977. File:Titan IVA Centaur with Mercury ELINT spy satellite.jpg, A Titan IV on LC-41 in 1996. The steel towers visible at the left and right are part of the

lightning Lightning is a natural phenomenon consisting of electrostatic discharges occurring through the atmosphere between two electrically charged regions. One or both regions are within the atmosphere, with the second region sometimes occurring on ...

protection system. File:KSC-06pd0069 - Roll out of New Horizons launch vehicle.jpg, SLC-41 in its early Atlas V years, carrying

as its payload in 2006. File:KSC-20170818-PH AWG01 0009 (36482856482).jpg, An Atlas V launching from the pad, with the crew access tower (left) complete. File:Vulcan Cert 2 Launch (8699035).jpg, A

Launches from SLC-41 in October 2024.

Notes

References

External links

Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
{{Merritt Island Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Launch complexes of the United States Space Force 1965 establishments in Florida