NASA Science
Places · Landing site
Launch Site One landing pad
New Shepard flew to space and landed its booster upright here in November 2015, a month before Falcon 9 did it on an orbital mission.
- Where
- West Texas, United States
- Coordinates
- 31.42°N 104.76°W
- Since
- 2015
- On the map
- Show me
- More
- blueorigin.com
The sky from here
Measured at these coordinates the sky is zone 3: rural transition, which is Bortle 3–4 and a naked-eye limit of about magnitude 6.2–7.0. The Milky Way is clearly there but loses its detail near the horizon. Light domes are obvious in several directions.
Of the 110 Messier objects, 38 are an unaided-eye target from a sky this dark, 106 are comfortable in 10×50s and 106 in a 130mm reflector. You would have to get roughly 7 km north-east before the sky reaches Bortle 2.
Every night of the year reaches full astronomical darkness at this latitude; the Sun always gets its eighteen degrees below the horizon, which places much further from the equator cannot say.
The centre of the galaxy reaches 30° at its highest, which puts the brightest part of the Milky Way clear of the horizon murk without ever being overhead. Of the 110 Messier objects, 4 never set from here and every one of them rises at some point in the year.
Triangulum Galaxy, Ring Nebula and Hercules Cluster pass close to the zenith from this latitude — an object at the zenith is being seen through the least air it will ever be seen through, and the difference against the same object low in the south is not subtle.
Bode's Galaxy and Cigar Galaxy never set from this latitude, so they are available on any clear night of the year rather than for one season of it.
Read at 31.42°N 104.76°W. Darkness is estimated rather than measured; everything else follows from the latitude and holds along the whole parallel. How accurate this is.
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Questions
What part of the sky never rises at Launch Site One landing pad?
Everything south of declination −59°. From 31.4°N that is a cap 31° in radius centred on the south celestial pole, which is 7.3% of the whole celestial sphere. It is out of reach permanently rather than seasonally: no time of year and no instrument brings it above the horizon. The matching 7.3% around the north celestial pole is the same geometry inverted, and never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does Launch Site One landing pad get?
11 hours on the best night, around 21 December, falling to 6 hours 30 minutes around 21 June. That counts only proper astronomical night, with the Sun eighteen degrees down; the merely-dark hours either side of it are longer. Every night of the year gets there eventually, which is the quiet advantage of not being any further from the equator than this.
What has to be in orbit to come down at Launch Site One landing pad?
Only orbits of 31.4° or steeper. The ground track of an orbit swings between latitudes 31.4° north and south of the equator and no further, which puts 31.4°N outside the reach of anything shallower — a plane change would have to come first, and plane changes are the most expensive manoeuvre in the catalogue. The steeper the orbit, the more often the track passes overhead and the more return opportunities there are.
How far is Launch Site One landing pad from the other sites on this map?
Apache Point Observatory is the nearest thing to it here — 181 km to the north-west. The nearest other landing site is Utah Test and Training Range, 1,280 km to the north-west. Distances are great-circle, so they are what a signal covers rather than what a road does.