Spaceflight Now
Places · Spaceport
Vandenberg Space Force Base
The west-coast range, and the one American site with a clear path south — which is why almost every US polar and sun-synchronous payload leaves from here.
- Where
- California, United States
- Coordinates
- 34.63°N 120.61°W
- Since
- 1959
- On the map
- Show me
The sky from here
The sky over this spot is zone 4 — suburban edge, Bortle 4–5, with a naked-eye limit around magnitude 5.7–6.5. The Milky Way is a faint band overhead and gone lower down. The sky is noticeably grey rather than black.
Against that sky 99 of the 110 Messier objects are straightforward in 10×50 binoculars and 100 in a 130mm, with 21 reachable by eye alone. The nearest sky of Bortle 2 or better lies about 22 km north-west 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 26° 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, 7 never set from here and every one of them rises at some point in the year.
The sky here is kindest to Ring Nebula, Hercules Cluster and Triangulum 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.
Spindle Galaxy, 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 34.63°N 120.61°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 Vandenberg Space Force Base?
Everything south of declination −55°. From 34.6°N that is a cap 35° in radius centred on the south celestial pole, which is 8.9% 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 8.9% around the north celestial pole is the same geometry inverted, and never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does Vandenberg Space Force Base get?
Between 5 hours 59 minutes on the shortest night of the year, around 21 June, and 11 hours 10 minutes on the longest, around 21 December. The measure is astronomical darkness — the Sun a full eighteen degrees under — not simply the hours between sunset and sunrise. The sky here reaches it on every night of the year, which is not true much further from the equator.
What orbits can be reached from Vandenberg Space Force Base?
Anything inclined at 34.6° or more, for free. A rocket launched due east from 34.6°N arrives in an orbit inclined at 34.6° — the shallowest the site can reach without spending propellant to turn the plane — and steeper orbits are simply a matter of launching on a different heading. Steeper targets cost nothing extra: the 51.6° of the Space Station, and the near-polar sun-synchronous orbits the Earth-observation fleet uses, are all reachable directly. Shallower is where it gets expensive. Every one of the 34.6° between here and the 0° of a geostationary belt is paid for in a plane change, which is why equatorial pads are worth building even in inconvenient places.
How far is Vandenberg Space Force Base from the other sites on this map?
Its closest neighbour on this map is Landing Zone 4, 0.4 km away to the west. The nearest other spaceport is Starbase, 2,440 km to the east. Measured as the great circle between coordinates, which is the shortest path across the surface and rarely the one you could travel.