Places · Landing site
Utah Test and Training Range
Sample-return capsules are aimed at this range: Genesis, Stardust, and OSIRIS-REx's asteroid sample, which touched down here in September 2023.
The sky from here
The sky over this spot is zone 2 — rural, Bortle 2–3, with a naked-eye limit around magnitude 6.7–7.5. The Milky Way is structured and obvious. Light domes sit low on the horizon over distant towns, and the rest of the sky is genuinely dark.
Against that sky 107 of the 110 Messier objects are straightforward in 10×50 binoculars and 107 in a 130mm, with 44 reachable by eye alone. There is nowhere darker worth driving to; this is already among the better skies on the planet.
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 21° 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, 11 never set from here and every one of them rises at some point in the year.
The sky here is kindest to Cat's Eye Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy and Sunflower Galaxy, 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.
Little Dumbbell, Pinwheel Galaxy and Owl Nebula 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 40.49°N 113.47°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 Utah Test and Training Range?
Everything south of declination −50°. From 40.5°N that is a cap 40° in radius centred on the south celestial pole, which is 12% of the whole celestial sphere. Nothing about the calendar or the aperture changes that — the cap is below the horizon at every hour of every night. Its mirror image, the same 12% around the north celestial pole, is circumpolar here and never goes down.
How many hours of true darkness does Utah Test and Training Range get?
Between 4 hours 45 minutes on the shortest night of the year, around 21 June, and 11 hours 27 minutes on the longest, around 21 December. Astronomical darkness is the Sun more than eighteen degrees below the horizon, which is a stricter thing than the Sun being down. The sky here reaches it on every night of the year, which is not true much further from the equator.
What has to be in orbit to come down at Utah Test and Training Range?
Only orbits of 40.5° or steeper. The ground track of an orbit swings between latitudes 40.5° north and south of the equator and no further, which puts 40.5°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 Utah Test and Training Range from the other sites on this map?
The nearest is Goldstone Deep Space Complex, about 638 km to the south-west. The nearest other landing site is Landing Zone 4, 905 km to the south-west. Distances are great-circle, so they are what a signal covers rather than what a road does.