The Western Range (WR) is the space launch range that supports the major launch head at

Vandenberg Space Force Base Vandenberg Space Force Base , previously Vandenberg Air Force Base, is a United States Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California. Established in 1941, Vandenberg Space Force Base is a space launch base, launching spacecraft from the ...

. Managed by the Space Launch Delta 30, the WR extends from the West Coast of the United States to 90° east longitude in the

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), ...

where it meets the

Eastern Range The Eastern Range (ER) is an American rocket range (Spaceport) that supports missile and rocket launches from the two major List of rocket launch sites, launch heads located at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the Kennedy Space Center ( ...

Operations involve military, government, and commercial interests. The WR has been operated by civilian contractors since its establishment, following the precedent of the Eastern Range. On 1 October 2003, InDyne Inc. took over the range contract from

ITT Industries ITT Inc., formerly ITT Corporation, is an American worldwide manufacturing company based in Stamford, Connecticut. The company produces specialty components for the aerospace, transportation, energy and industrial markets. ITT's three businesse ...

which had operated the range for the previous 44 years.

History

Navy's Pacific Missile Range (PMR)

The Navy established the Naval Missile Facility at Point Arguello (NMFPA) after the transfer from the Army of 19,800 acres from the southern portion of Camp Cooke in May 1958. Camp Cooke was a World War II training and POW facility and a maximum security Disciplinary Barracks site. Cooke Air Force Base, later

, was established on 64,000 acres of the northern portion. The Secretary of Defense directed the Navy to establish the Pacific Missile Range (PMR) with headquarters at Point Mugu and instrumentation sites along the California coast and downrange in the Pacific Ocean. Agreements between the Navy and the Air Force specified that nearly all launches from

were under the command and control of Navy and the PMR. A Pacific Missile Impact Location System (MILS) was installed to support both

Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile An intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) is a ballistic missile with a range (aeronautics), range between (), categorized between a medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) and an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Classifying ball ...

(IRBM) and

Intercontinental Ballistic Missile An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range (aeronautics), range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more Thermonuclear weapon, thermonuclear warheads). Conven ...

(ICBM) tests. IRBM impacts were northeast of Hawaii and covered by a system terminating at the Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay operational November 1958. The ICBM impacts required MILS monitoring between Midway Island and

Wake Island Wake Island (), also known as Wake Atoll, is a coral atoll in the Micronesia subregion of the Pacific Ocean. The atoll is composed of three islets – Wake, Wilkes, and Peale Islands – surrounding a lagoon encircled by a coral reef. The neare ...

and between Wake Island and

Eniwetok Enewetak Atoll (; also spelled Eniwetok Atoll or sometimes Eniewetok; , , or , ; known to the Japanese as Brown Atoll or Brown Island; ) is a large coral atoll of 40 islands in the Pacific Ocean and with its 296 people (as of 2021) forms a legi ...

. Two target arrays and a Broad Ocean Area (BOA) array system were installed. The ICBM range was operational in May 1959 with two target arrays. MILS shore facilities were at Kaneohe and each of the islands.

Air Force — Western Test Range

Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara directed a restructure of the missile ranges on 16 November 1963 with an effective date of 1 July 1964. This restructure shifted responsibility of major sections of the Navy's Pacific Missile Range to the United States Air Force. In a final transfer, on 1 February 1965, the Air Force, with headquarters at Vandenberg Air Force Base, took control of Pillar Point,

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, two sites in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

Canton Island Canton Island (also known as Kanton or Abariringa), previously known as Mary Island, Mary Balcout's Island or Swallow Island, is the largest, northernmost, and , the sole inhabited island of the Phoenix Islands, in the Republic of Kiribati. It i ...

, Midway Island, and

in the mid-Pacific as well as

and

Bikini Atoll Bikini Atoll ( or ; Marshallese language, Marshallese: , , ), known as Eschscholtz Atoll between the 19th century and 1946, is a coral reef in the Marshall Islands consisting of 23 islands surrounding a central lagoon. The atoll is at the no ...

in the

Marshall Islands The Marshall Islands, officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands, is an island country west of the International Date Line and north of the equator in the Micronesia region of the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. The territory consists of 29 c ...

. The Air Force also took control of the six range instrumented ships ''Huntsville'', ''Longview'', ''Range Tracker'', ''Richfield'', ''Sunnyvale'', and ''Watertown''. The Navy retained a missile test facility at Point Mugu. In 1979, the name was shortened to simply the Western Test Range.

Notable launches

* 28 February 1959 -

Discoverer 1 Discoverer 1 was the first of a series of satellites which were part of the Corona (satellite), CORONA reconnaissance satellite program. It was launched on a Thor-Agena, Thor-Agena A rocket on 28 February 1959 at 21:49:16 GMT from Vandenberg Ai ...

- first spacecraft placed in a

polar orbit A polar orbit is one in which a satellite passes above or nearly above both poles of the body being orbited (usually a planet such as the Earth, but possibly another body such as the Moon or Sun) on each revolution. It has an inclination of abo ...

. * 29 September 2013 – Falcon 9 Flight 6, the first launch of the

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 ...

v1.1 launch vehicle from a privately developed leased launchpad at

Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg may refer to: * Vandenberg (surname), including a list of people with the name * USNS ''General Hoyt S. Vandenberg'' (T-AGM-10), transport ship in the United States Navy, sank as an artificial reef in Key West, Florida * Vandenberg S ...

was used in an unusual post-mission launch vehicle test. The first-stage booster of the

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 ...

launch vehicle will conduct a propulsive-return over-water test. After the second stage with the

CASSIOPE ''Cassiope'' is a genus of 18 small shrubby species in the family Ericaceae. It is the sole genus in the subfamily Cassiopoideae. They are native to the Arctic and north temperate montane regions. The genus is named after Cassiopeia of Greek ...

payload separates from the booster, the booster will do a retro burn to reduce velocity from approximately to a controllable descent velocity, and then a second burn just before it reaches the water to simulate a

vertical landing Vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) is a form of takeoff and landing for rockets. Multiple VTVL craft have flown. A notable VTVL vehicle was the Apollo Lunar Module which delivered the first humans to the Moon. Building on the decades of ...

of the first stage. This will be the first high-altitude, high-velocity test of the

SpaceX reusable launch system development program SpaceX has private spaceflight, privately funded the development of Orbital spaceflight, orbital spacecraft, launch systems that can be reusable launch vehicle, reused many times, similar to the reusability of aircraft. SpaceX has developed t ...

References

Bibliography

* * *
Western Test Range Handbook
Defense Technical Information Center, July 1981 {{US Proving Grounds Vandenberg Space Force Base