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Shuttle Landing Facility

Airports in Brevard County, FloridaBuildings and structures in Merritt Island, FloridaKennedy Space CenterSpace Shuttle Emergency Landing SitesSpace Shuttle program
Lunar planetary landscape and runway at KSC built to test Morpheus lander
Lunar planetary landscape and runway at KSC built to test Morpheus lander

The Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF), also known as Launch and Landing Facility (LLF) (IATA: QQS, ICAO: KTTS, FAA LID: TTS), is an airport located on Merritt Island in Brevard County, Florida, United States. It is a part of the Kennedy Space Center and was used by Space Shuttle for landing until July 2011. It was also used for takeoffs and landings for NASA training jets such as the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and for civilian aircraft. Starting in 2015, Space Florida manages and operates the facility under a 30-year lease from NASA. In addition to ongoing use by NASA, private companies have been utilizing the SLF since the 2011 end of the Space Shuttle program.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Shuttle Landing Facility (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Shuttle Landing Facility
Sharkey Road,

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N 28.615 ° E -80.6945 °
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Launch and Landing Facility

Sharkey Road
32899
Florida, United States
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Lunar planetary landscape and runway at KSC built to test Morpheus lander
Lunar planetary landscape and runway at KSC built to test Morpheus lander
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Launch Complex 39 Press Site
Launch Complex 39 Press Site

The Launch Complex 39 Press Site is a news media facility at Launch Complex 39 at the John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on Merritt Island, Florida where journalists have observed every U.S. crewed space launch since Apollo 8 in 1968. The site is just south of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB); 3 miles (4.8 km) west-southwest of Pad A, and 3.4 miles (5.4 km) southwest of Pad B. The site includes an elevated mound where news media facilities are located, as well as the KSC News Center and several smaller support buildings. The News Center is 8,700 square feet (810 m2) and contains 15 site support offices, media workspace, and a media library. Current media buildings include CBS, NBC, Florida Today and The Orlando Sentinel; and trailers for The Associated Press and Reuters. The 100-seat auditorium in the audio-video support building, where pre- and post-launch news conferences are held, is named for former CNN correspondent John Holliman, who covered space exploration until his death in 1998. It was built in 1980. A large illuminated digital countdown clock and a flagpole flying an American flag on the edge of the turning basin have often been included in television coverage and launch photos. Before a launch, the clock counts down, showing the remaining time until T-zero in hours, minutes and seconds (–00:00:00). After launch, the clock counts forward in Mission Elapsed Time for several hours. The flagpole also flew a smaller Space Shuttle Orbiter-specific flag below the American flag on launch day during the final years of the Space Shuttle Program.

Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39
Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39

Launch Complex 39 (LC-39) is a rocket launch site at the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida, United States. The site and its collection of facilities were originally built as the Apollo program's "Moonport" and later modified for the Space Shuttle program. Launch Complex 39 consists of three launch sub-complexes or "pads"—39A, 39B, and 39C—a Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), a Crawlerway used by crawler-transporters to carry mobile launcher platforms between the VAB and the pads, Orbiter Processing Facility buildings, a Launch Control Center which contains the firing rooms, a news facility famous for the iconic countdown clock seen in television coverage and photos, and various logistical and operational support buildings. SpaceX leases Launch Complex 39A from NASA and has modified the pad to support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. NASA began modifying Launch Complex 39B in 2007 to accommodate the now defunct Constellation program, and is currently prepared for the Artemis program, which was first launched in November 2022. A pad to be designated 39C, which would have been a copy of pads 39A and 39B, was originally planned for Apollo but never built. A smaller pad, also designated 39C, was constructed from January to June 2015, to accommodate small-lift launch vehicles. NASA launches from pads 39A and 39B have been supervised from the NASA Launch Control Center (LCC), located 3 miles (4.8 km) from the launch pads. LC-39 is one of several launch sites that share the radar and tracking services of the Eastern Test Range.

Space Mirror Memorial
Space Mirror Memorial

The Space Mirror Memorial, which forms part of the larger Astronauts Memorial, is a National Memorial on the grounds of the John F. Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on Merritt Island, Florida. It is maintained by the Astronauts Memorial Foundation (AMF), whose offices are located in the NASA Center for Space Education next door to the Visitor Complex. The memorial was designed in 1987 by Holt Hinshaw Pfau Jones, and dedicated on May 9, 1991, to remember the lives of the men and women who have died in the various space programs of the United States, particularly those of NASA. The Astronauts Memorial has been designated by the U.S. Congress "as the national memorial to astronauts who die in the line of duty" (Joint Resolution 214, 1991). In addition to 20 NASA career astronauts, the memorial includes the names of a U.S. Air Force X-15 test pilot, a U.S. Air Force officer who died while training for a then-classified military space program, a civilian spaceflight participant who died in the Challenger disaster, and an Israeli astronaut who was killed in the Columbia disaster. In July 2019, the AMF unanimously voted to include private astronauts on the memorial, recognizing the important contributions made to the American space program by private spaceflight crew members. The first private astronaut to be added to the wall was Scaled Composites pilot Michael T. Alsbury, who died in the crash of SpaceShipTwo VSS Enterprise on October 31, 2014. His name was added to the memorial on January 25, 2020.