Places · Landing site
Port Canaveral droneship berth
Where the Atlantic droneships tie up with a booster still standing on the deck, a few days after it landed a few hundred kilometres offshore.
- Where
- Florida, United States
- Coordinates
- 28.41°N 80.62°W
- Since
- 2016
- On the map
- Show me
- More
- spacex.com
The sky from here
The sky over this spot is zone 6 — bright suburban, Bortle 6–7, with a naked-eye limit around magnitude 4.7–5.5. The sky within thirty degrees of the horizon glows greyish white. Only the brighter constellations survive.
Against that sky 37 of the 110 Messier objects are straightforward in 10×50 binoculars and 37 in a 130mm, with 9 reachable by eye alone. The nearest sky of Bortle 2 or better lies about 59 km east of here.
The Sun drops far enough below the horizon here for full astronomical darkness on every night of the year — which is not true of anywhere much further from the equator.
The centre of the galaxy reaches 33° 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, 2 never set from here and every one of them rises at some point in the year.
The sky here is kindest to Triangulum Galaxy, Pleiades and Ring Nebula, each of which passes within a few degrees of overhead — 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 28.41°N 80.62°W. Darkness is estimated rather than measured; everything else follows from the latitude and holds along the whole parallel. How accurate this is.
Nearby
Questions
What part of the sky never rises at Port Canaveral droneship berth?
Everything south of declination −62°. From 28.4°N that is a cap 28° in radius centred on the south celestial pole, which is 6.0% of the whole celestial sphere. That part of the sky is not merely a winter object or a difficult one; it is geometrically unavailable from this latitude. The equivalent cap around the north celestial pole is the compensation, and it never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does Port Canaveral droneship berth get?
10 hours 52 minutes on the best night, around 21 December, falling to 6 hours 55 minutes around 21 June. The measure is astronomical darkness — the Sun a full eighteen degrees under — not simply the hours between sunset and sunrise. 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 Port Canaveral droneship berth?
Only orbits of 28.4° or steeper. The ground track of an orbit swings between latitudes 28.4° north and south of the equator and no further, which puts 28.4°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 Port Canaveral droneship berth from the other sites on this map?
Its closest neighbour on this map is Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, 9.8 km away to the north-east. The nearest other landing site is Landing Zones 1 & 2, 11 km to the north-east. Measured as the great circle between coordinates, which is the shortest path across the surface and rarely the one you could travel.