Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) is a

launch complex A launch pad is an above-ground facility from which a rocket-powered missile or space vehicle is vertically launched. The term ''launch pad'' can be used to describe just the central launch platform ( mobile launcher platform), or the entire ...

located at the

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 ...

. Located south of the

Missile Row "Missile Row" was a nickname given in the 1960s to the eight SM-65 Atlas and HGM-25A Titan I launch complexes at the middle area of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, historically used by the United States Air Force and NASA, namely LC-11 to ...

launch range, the complex originally consisted of two pads—designated LC-36A and LC-36B—to support the flights of

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 ...

launch vehicles equipped 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 ...

upper stage. From the 1960s to the 1980s, LC-36 was used by

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 ...

and 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 ...

to launch many payloads from the

Atlas-Centaur The Atlas-Centaur was a United States expendable launch vehicle derived from the SM-65 Atlas D missile. The vehicle featured a Centaur (rocket stage), Centaur upper stage, the first such stage to use high-performance liquid hydrogen as fuel. La ...

and its derivatives, including the

Pioneer Pioneer commonly refers to a person who is among the first at something that is new to a community. A pioneer as a settler is among the first settling at a place that is new to the settler community. A historic example are American pioneers, perso ...

Surveyor Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. These points are usually on the ...

, and

Mariner A sailor, seaman, mariner, or seafarer is a person who works aboard a watercraft as part of its crew, and may work in any one of a number of different fields that are related to the operation and maintenance of a ship. While the term ''sailor' ...

probes. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s,

General Dynamics General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American publicly traded aerospace and defense corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia. As of 2020, it was the fifth largest defense contractor in the world by arms sales and fifth largest in the Unit ...

(and later

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 ...

) modified the two pads to support the larger

Atlas I The Atlas I was a US expendable launch system manufactured by General Dynamics in the 1990s to launch a variety of satellites. It was largely a commercial rebrand of the Atlas G (although it did fly multiple government payloads), but did featur ...

Atlas II Atlas II was a member of the Atlas family of launch vehicles, which evolved from the successful Atlas missile program of the 1950s. The Atlas II was a direct evolution of the Atlas I, featuring longer first-stage tanks, higher-perfor ...

, and

Atlas III The Atlas III (known as the Atlas II-AR (R for Russian) early in development ) was an American orbital launch vehicle, used in the years between 2000 and 2005. It was developed from the highly successful Atlas II rocket and shared many componen ...

. Following the Atlas program's relocation to

Space Launch Complex 41 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, Florida. Originally built as Launch Complex 41 (LC-41), it and ...

(SLC-41) in 2005, LC-36 stood vacant until

Blue Origin Blue Origin Enterprises, L.P. is an American space technology company headquartered in Kent, Washington. The company operates the suborbital New Shepard rocket and the heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. In addition to producing engines for its own ...

acquired the lease in 2015 for use by their heavy-lift

New Glenn New Glenn is a heavy-lift launch vehicle developed and operated by the American company Blue Origin. The rocket is designed to have a Reusable launch vehicle, partially reusable, two-stage design with a diameter of . The first stage is powered ...

rocket. The company made extensive modifications to the complex during this time, including demolishing 36A and 36B to build one large pad in place, as well as integrating the neighboring

Launch Complex 11 Launch Complex 11 (LC-11) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, is a launch complex used by Atlas missiles between 1958 and 1964. It is the southernmost of the launch pads known as Missile Row. When it was built, it, along with comple ...

(LC-11) into the facility. Following this large-scale renovation, the new era of LC-36 commenced with the maiden flight of New Glenn in January 2025.

History

LC-36 was originally constructed by the

US government The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, execut ...

in the early 1960s in order to launch the

rocket, with first launch in May 1962. LC-36A was the scene of the biggest on-pad explosion in Cape history when Atlas-Centaur AC-5 fell back onto the pad on March 2, 1965. The accident spurred NASA to complete work on LC-36B which had been abandoned when it was 90% finished. LC-36B was built near LC-36A "due to the Atlas-Centaur’s increasing flight rate – and low reliability early on." The pad was modified by the operator of Atlas during the late 1980s to be able to launch the

, with first launch occurring in July 1990, and was subsequently modified two additional times during the 1990s to launch the

and

launch vehicles. Atlas III made its sixth and final launch from LC-36 in 2005. There was a total of 68 and 77 launches from pads 36A and 36B, respectively, while the US government operated the launch complex in the first five decades of spaceflight.

Interregnum

The pad was unused from mid-2005 through 2015. The legacy Atlas-Centaur umbilical towers of both pads were demolished in 2006. The mobile service towers were both demolished in controlled explosions on June 16, 2007. Tower B was demolished at 13:59 GMT (09:59 EDT) and tower A followed twelve minutes later at 14:11 (10:11 EDT). In 2008, ''

Aviation Week ''Aviation Week & Space Technology'', often abbreviated ''Aviation Week'' or ''AW&ST'', is the flagship magazine of the Aviation Week Network, a division of Informa. The weekly magazine is available in print and online, reporting on the aeros ...

'' magazine reported that the

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the 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 origins to 1 ...

committed to lease Launch Complex 36 to

Space Florida Space Florida is the aerospace economic development agency of the State of Florida. Founded in 2006, it works with commercial space companies, other governmental agencies, and academic institutions to develop space-related infrastructure. His ...

for future use by the Athena III launch system, but that program never moved forward. In March 2010, the USAF 45th Space Wing issued real property licenses to Space Florida for Space Launch Complexes 36 and 46 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Moon Express Moon Express (MoonEx; vehicle model prefix: MX) is an American privately held company formed in 2010 by a group of Silicon Valley and space entrepreneurs. It had the goal of winning the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize, and of ultimately mining th ...

leased the pad in February 2015 from Space Florida as a development and test site for its commercial lunar operations and its

lunar lander A lunar lander or Moon lander is a Lander (spacecraft), spacecraft designed to Moon landing, land on the surface of the Moon. As of 2024, the Apollo Lunar Module is the only lunar lander to have ever been used in human spaceflight, completing s ...

flight test vehicles. In 2015,

signed a long-term lease of launch site from

for launching Blue's orbital rockets, after Space Florida had previously leased the facility from the USAF in 2010 in order to facilitate

commercial Commercial may refer to: * (adjective for) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and services ** (adjective for) trade, the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information or money * a dose of advertising ...

use of the land and facilities since the Air Force no longer required use of the launch complex. Moon Express and Blue Origin shared LC-36, delineated into LC-36A and LC-36B respectively, until Moon Express announced its relocation to Launch Complexes 17 and 18 in 2016, allowing Blue Origin full use of the LC-36 facility. In early 2016, Blue intended to begin orbital launches by 2020, as of 2019 they are expected to begin from LC-36 no earlier than 2024, although the launch finally occurred on 16 January 2025.

Blue Origin

On September 15, 2015,

announced it would use Launch Complex 36 for launches of its

orbital launch vehicle A launch vehicle is typically a rocket-powered vehicle designed to carry a payload (a crewed spacecraft or satellites) from Earth's surface or lower atmosphere to outer space. The most common form is the ballistic missile-shaped multistag ...

later in the decade. Blue had the lease in place for Launch Complex 36 by late 2015 from the

state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

space agency,

, and will manufacture their new

BE-4 The BE-4 (Blue Engine 4) is a liquid rocket engine developed by Blue Origin. It uses an oxygen-rich, liquefied natural gas, liquefied methane fuel and operates on a staged combustion cycle. The BE-4 produces of thrust at sea level. Developmen ...

-powered orbital launch vehicle at the nearby

Exploration Park Exploration Park is a partnership formed in 2011 between NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Space Florida. There are 299 Acres on KSC property, but outside the NASA badge controlled area. As of March 2016, companies have the opportunity to le ...

, also a part of the Space Florida land complex. By October 2015, the pad design and configuration was not yet publicly known. Blue

broke ground Groundbreaking, also known as cutting, sod-cutting, turning the first sod, turf-cutting, or a sod-turning ceremony, is a traditional ceremony in many cultures that celebrates the first day of construction for a building or other project. Such cer ...

for the facility to initiate construction activity on the site in June 2016. By March 2016, the first launch of the Blue orbital launch vehicle

was estimated to be no earlier than 2020 and that target date had not changed by the time high-level specifications for the new launcher were unveiled in September 2016, nor by the time construction of the launch site was well underway in September 2018. New Glenn will be a very large -diameter vehicle. The first stage will be powered by seven

methane Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The abundance of methane on Earth makes ...

oxygen Oxygen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group (periodic table), group in the periodic table, a highly reactivity (chemistry), reactive nonmetal (chemistry), non ...

engines producing total

thrust Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's third law. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction, the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction to be applied to that ...

at launch. The first stage will be reusable and is designed to land vertically. Blue has also leased the adjacent land—formerly known as LC-11—to use as a ground-based rocket engine test facility. Construction of the new launch complex and engine test facility was still underway in September 2018. In addition to LC-11, Blue also leased LC-12 to the north, which has been in use as a storage site for various hardware surrounding New Glenn. Although Blue has been publicly quiet about the status of the launch complex construction, high-resolution aerial photography released after

Hurricane Dorian Hurricane Dorian was an extremely powerful and catastrophic tropical cyclone, which became the most intense on record to strike The Bahamas. It is tied with the 1935 Labor Day hurricane for the strongest landfall in the Atlantic basin in term ...

in September 2019 showed that facility foundation work is in place—including for the horizontal integration facility, the launch service structure, lightning tower, and water tower—and above-ground steel construction has commenced. In September 2019, the

propellant A propellant (or propellent) is a mass that is expelled or expanded in such a way as to create a thrust or another motive force in accordance with Newton's third law of motion, and "propel" a vehicle, projectile, or fluid payload. In vehicle ...

tank farm was in the process of being installed.

Launch statistics

LC-36A and LC-36

LC-36B

Gallery

File:Atlas Centaur 27 with Pioneer 10 on launch pad.jpg, An

at LC-36A prior to the launch of

Pioneer 10 ''Pioneer 10'' (originally designated Pioneer F) is a NASA space probe launched in 1972 that completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter. ''Pioneer 10'' became the first of five artificial objects to achieve the escape velocity needed ...

. File:Atlas III Centaur.jpg, An

launches from LC-36B. File:LC-36A Demolition.jpg, The MSS of Launch Complex 36A falls to the ground after critical supports are destroyed in a controlled explosion.

References

{{Blue Origin Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Launch complexes of the United States Space Force Rocket launch sites in the United States 1962 establishments in Florida Blue Origin facilities