Elon Musk has grandiose plans for landing the first humans on Mars. That plan includes the time-tested Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, where the Apollo 11 mission lifted off the launch pad carrying humanity’s first Moon walkers. SpaceX leased the pad from NASA and has completed renovating the site to accommodate its Falcon 9 rocket and upcoming Falcon Heavy deep space launch vehicle.
The Hawthorne, California-based commercial launch provider, founded by Musk in 2002, intends to use LC-39A for the first time on February 3rd for the launch of the privately owned Echostar 23 communications satellite, which will ride atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. That mission will be followed by a NASA-contracted cargo run a couple of weeks later in which SpaceX will send its Dragon capsule spacecraft to the International Space Station filled with supplies and scientific instruments.
According to early concepts presented by SpaceX, LC-39A will one day also be used to launch the Interplanetary Transport System—an enormous spaceship that is designed to carry infrastructure to build a fueling facility on Mars and eventually transport the Red Planet’s first human colonists.
SpaceX’s maiden launch from LC-39A will be the first launch of any kind from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center since the agency shuttered the celebrated Space Shuttle program in 2011. After the pad was used to launch the powerful Saturn V rocket with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on board for their historic mission to the Moon, NASA used it to facilitate the launch of Shuttle missions that helped construct the Hubble Telescope and International Space Station.
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