From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

White Sands Space Harbor

NASA training and research site

Field	Value
name	White Sands Space Harbor
image	STS-3 landing.jpg
type	Military
owner	US Air Force
operator	NASA
city-served	White Sands Test Facility
location	White Sands Missile Range
elevation-f	3,913
elevation-m	1,192
coordinates
pushpin_map	New Mexico
pushpin_map_caption	Location in New Mexico
r1-number	17/35
r1-length-f	35,000
r1-length-m	10,700
r1-surface	Dry lakebed
r2-number	5/23
r2-length-f	35,000
r2-length-m	10,700
r2-surface	Dry lakebed
r3-number	2/20
r3-length-f	12,800
r3-length-m	3,900
r3-surface	Dry lakebed

White Sands Space Harbor (WSSH) is a spaceport in New Mexico that was formerly used as a Space Shuttle runway, a test site for rocket research, and the primary training area used by NASA for Space Shuttle pilots practicing approaches and landings in the Shuttle Training Aircraft and T-38 Talon aircraft. With its runways, navigational aids, runway lighting, and control facilities, it also served as a backup Shuttle landing site. WSSH is a part of the White Sands Test Facility, and is located approximately 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Alamogordo, New Mexico, within the boundaries of the White Sands Missile Range.

Runway facilities

In 1976, NASA selected Northrup Strip as the site for shuttle pilot training. A second runway was added crossing the original north-south landing strip, and in 1979 both lakebed runways were lengthened to 35,000 ft (10,668 m), which includes 15,000 ft (4,572 m) usable runway with 10,000 ft (3048 m) extensions on either end, to allow White Sands Space Harbor to serve as shuttle backup landing facility. While the Space Harbor was activated as a backup landing site for STS-116 due to poor weather conditions at both Edwards Air Force Base (high cross-winds) and Kennedy Space Center (clouds and rain), White Sands was only used for one landing of the Space Shuttle, that of the on March 30, 1982, for STS-3.

Boeing's Starliner Calypso returned from a 49-hour Orbital Test Flight at 12:57 UTC on December 22, 2019. This marked only the second time an orbital vehicle has returned to Earth at White Sands.

Launch complex

The McDonnell Douglas DC-X of the USAF Single Stage Rocket Technology (SSRT) program was launched 1993-96 at the harbor.

Landing history

No.	Date	Flight	Landing site
1	30 March 1982	STS-3	Runway 17
2	22 December 2019	Boeing Orbital Flight Test
3	25 May 2022	Boeing Orbital Flight Test 2
4	7 September 2024	Boeing Crew Flight Test

References

"White Sands Space Harbor". NASA.
"White Sands Space Harbor - Capabilities". NASA.
"DC-X".
{{YouTube. ra5rY6gTZ0A. Delta-Clipper-1993-White-Sands-Xenon.mov

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

historic-american-engineering-record-in-new-mexico launch-complexes-of-the-united-states-space-force spaceports-in-the-united-states white-sands-missile-range 1979-establishments-in-new-mexico

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about White Sands Space Harbor — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report