Many more rockets may lift off from California next year.
On Oct. 10, the Department of the Air Force approved SpaceX‘s proposal to launch up to 100 missions annually from Vandenberg Space Force Base, which sits on the Golden State’s rugged, beautiful and cloudy central coast.
SpaceX had been cleared to launch just 50 times per year from the site.
The newly announced record of decision (ROD) came after the Air Force released a final environmental impact statement about SpaceX’s proposed ramp-up of activities at Vandenberg.
To date, the only SpaceX rocket that has ever flown from Vandenberg is the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 — and all of its liftoffs there have been from Space Launch Complex 4-East (SLC-4E).
But the Air Force approval opens Vandenberg to launches of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy as well, from Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6). That pad has not hosted a liftoff since 2022; it will be modified to support both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions, according to an Air Force statement issued on Tuesday (Oct. 14).
The newly granted approval authorizes up to five Falcon Heavy launches per year from SLC-6. But the heavy lifter likely won’t actually use 5% of SpaceX’s 100-flight quota; the Falcon Heavy hasn’t flown in over a year, and SpaceX is working to get an even more powerful rocket online — Starship, a giant, fully reusable vehicle designed to help humanity settle Mars.
The Air Force approval is not the final word on the matter, however. The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial launches, “will issue an independent ROD based on its conclusions,” Air Force officials wrote in Tuesday’s statement.
SpaceX currently launches rockets from four sites — Vandenberg, Starbase in South Texas, and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, which are next door to each other on Florida’s Space Coast.
Starbase is the center of Starship manufacturing and testing; it has hosted all 11 of the megarocket’s test flights to date. Vandenberg generally supports launches to polar orbits, which are popular for Earth-observation missions. Because Earth rotates in a west-to-east direction, satellites that circle it from north to south eventually see almost all of the planet’s surface.
