· VANDENBERGVandenberg Space Force Base sits on the central coast of California, north of Santa Barbara, and is the west-coast counterpart to the Florida ranges. Launch Library 2 counts 902 launches from this site to date. Three pads are in regular use: SLC-4E, SLC-3E and SLC-2W. Everything below is written into this page by the server, so it reads the same for people and for machines.
Every launch currently on the books for this site, earliest first. Only rows with a clock time have a confirmed liftoff time. Where a launch provider has given no more than a month, a quarter or a year, that is what you see, because a made-up time would be worse than none.
| LIFTOFF (UTC) | ROCKET · MISSION | PROVIDER | PAD | STATUS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Starlink Group 17-52 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | SUCCESS | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Starlink Group 17-53 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | GO | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Starlink Group 17-38 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | GO | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Starlink Group 17-49 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | GO | |
date not yet set | Falcon 9 Block 5 SDA Tranche 1 Tracking Layer A | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | TBD |
date not yet set | Falcon 9 Block 5 SDA Tranche 1 Tracking Layer C | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | TBD |
date not yet set | Falcon 9 Block 5 SDA Tranche 1 Tracking Layer E | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | TBD |
date not yet set | Falcon 9 Block 5 SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer A | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | TBD |
date not yet set | Falcon 9 Block 5 SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer D | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | TBD |
date not yet set | Falcon 9 Block 5 SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer F | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | TBD |
date not yet set | Firefly Alpha Block 2 ConnectedCosmos Launch 1 | FA | Space Launch Complex 2W | TBD |
date not yet set | Firefly Alpha Block 2 QuickSounder | FA | Space Launch Complex 2W | TBD |
Three pads carry today's traffic, and one operator dominates it. Which pad a mission uses tells you who is flying and roughly what size of rocket to expect.
The workhorse of the west coast. The great majority of everything recorded at this site lifts off from SLC-4E: Starlink batches into the polar shells, Earth-observation satellites and national security payloads. A former Titan pad, rebuilt by SpaceX.
The ULA pad on the base, previously home to Atlas V and now flying Vulcan Centaur. It appears in the schedule far less often than SLC-4E, but with heavier and more specialised payloads.
The small-launch pad. Delta II flew from here for decades; Firefly Aerospace now uses it for Alpha, a light rocket aimed at single small satellites rather than large batches.
A fourth pad, SLC-8, shows up occasionally in the record for Northrop Grumman Minotaur flights. It is not in regular use and can go a long time between launches.
The base is an active Space Force installation and closed to the public, so every viewpoint is outside the fence, in the Lompoc Valley. The list below is what the Lompoc visitor bureau publishes; each entry names its source, and the distances are the ones the source states, not estimates by T-Rocket.
The closest of the published viewpoints and the one where the rocket appears soonest after liftoff. Parking is limited and the road closes once the lot is full, so arriving early matters. The park closes at sunset, which rules it out for late-night launches.
The only published spot that names which pads it can see, and the one called out for sound: it gets the best of the noise. In exchange it has no parking, no restrooms and no food, it is not wheelchair accessible, and mobile reception can be patchy.
A partial view of the pad and a good line on the rocket once it clears the horizon. Binoculars or a zoom lens are worth bringing at this distance. Paid parking and restrooms on site, but parking is limited during college hours.
Roadside viewing rather than a park. The intersections named as reliable are 13th Street and Arguello Boulevard, Renwick Avenue, and Floradale Avenue. Park carefully and do not block traffic: these are working roads, not viewing areas.
Three parks in and around Lompoc with parking, restrooms and open grass, listed for the view of the rocket climbing rather than of the pad itself. The source gives no distance for any of them, so neither does this page.
Coastal fog is the other variable here that Florida does not have. A launch can be perfectly on schedule and still be invisible from four miles away.
What actually flew, most recent first. This is the second busiest site in the United States, so the list moves quickly.
| LIFTOFF (UTC) | ROCKET · MISSION | PROVIDER | PAD | RESULT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Starlink Group 17-52 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | SUCCESS | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Starlink Group 17-51 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | SUCCESS | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Starlink Group 17-39 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | SUCCESS | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer E | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | SUCCESS | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Starlink Group 15-14 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | SUCCESS | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Starlink Group 17-48 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | SUCCESS | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Transporter 17 (Dedicated SSO Rideshare) | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | SUCCESS | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Starlink Group 17-46 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | SUCCESS | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Starlink Group 17-40 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | SUCCESS | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Starlink Group 17-45 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | SUCCESS | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 Starlink Group 17-28 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | SUCCESS | |
| Falcon 9 Block 5 NROL-179 | SpX | Space Launch Complex 4E | SUCCESS |
Because of what lies south of the base: open Pacific, all the way to Antarctica. That is the whole reason this site exists. A rocket needs to fly over empty space in case something goes wrong, and from the California coast the empty direction is south. Flying south puts a satellite into a polar or sun-synchronous orbit, the kind that passes over every point on Earth as the planet turns underneath it. That is what weather satellites, mapping satellites and reconnaissance satellites need. Florida cannot do it: launching south from the Cape would send the rocket down the length of the eastern seaboard.
A rocket launched eastward gets a free head start from the rotation of the Earth, and that head start is largest at the equator. Florida is closer to the equator and faces open Atlantic to the east, so it takes the deal. Vandenberg gives that up on purpose. A polar orbit does not benefit from the Earth's spin at all, so there is nothing to lose by launching south, and the Pacific makes it safe. The two sites are not competing, they serve different orbits.
NET is short for no earlier than. It is the earliest moment a launch can happen, not a promise. A launch can slip later by minutes or by months, and it will never lift off before the time shown. The status tells you how firm the date is: GO means confirmed for the listed time, TBC means the date is to be confirmed, TBD means it is still to be determined. Rows on this page that show only a month or a quarter are launches where the provider has not committed to a date at all.
From Launch Library 2 by The Space Devs, refetched by the T-Rocket server and written straight into this page. The site descriptions, the pad notes and the viewing section are written by T-Rocket from the sources named against each entry. What every value means and how fresh it is, is documented under data sources. T-Rocket is not an official source: only the launch provider can confirm a launch.