Spaceport Camden is a licensed

spaceport A spaceport or cosmodrome is a site for launching or receiving spacecraft, by analogy to a seaport for ships or an airport for aircraft. The word ''spaceport'', and even more so ''cosmodrome'', has traditionally been used for sites capable ...

Camden County, Georgia Camden County is a county located in the southeastern corner of the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 Census, the population was 50,513. Its county seat is Woodbine, and the largest city is St. Marys. It is one of the original cou ...

, near the city of Woodbine. The site tested the largest solid rocket motor ever fired as part of the Apollo Program and Camden County, Georgia was originally considered as a

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

launch site in the 1960s. Spaceport Camden began limited development as a rocket launch facility in early 2014, with its first launch taking place in August 2017, reaching .

History

During the early 1960s, Camden County in Georgia was considered by NASA as a potential launch site for the Apollo program. A site on

Merritt Island, Florida Merritt Island is a peninsula, commonly referred to as an island, in Brevard County, Florida, United States, located on the eastern Floridian coast, along the Atlantic Ocean. It is also the name of an unincorporated town in the central and sout ...

, near the existing Cape Canaveral launch pads, was selected instead; however some rocket testing for the Apollo program took place on the Georgia site. In November 2012, the Camden County Joint Development Authority voted unanimously to "explore developing an aero-spaceport facility" at an Atlantic coastal site to support both horizontal and vertical launch operations, in hopes of attracting a

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...

launch facility. SpaceX selected a location near

Brownsville, Texas Brownsville () is a city in Cameron County in the U.S. state of Texas. It is on the western Gulf Coast in South Texas, adjacent to the border with Matamoros, Mexico. The city covers , and has a population of 186,738 as of the 2020 census. It ...

for its launch site. However, in June 2015 the county authorized environmental studies, purchasing a former industrial location used by

Bayer CropScience Bayer AG (, commonly pronounced ; ) is a German multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's areas of business include pharmaceutica ...

and solid rocket motor manufacturer

Thiokol Thiokol (variously Thiokol Chemical Corporation(/Company), Morton Thiokol Inc., Cordant Technologies Inc., Thiokol Propulsion, AIC Group, ATK Thiokol, ATK Launch Systems Group; finally Orbital ATK before becoming part of Northrop Grumman) was an ...

to pursue the development of a spaceport. At the time, it was believed that the site, comprising , could see launches begin by 2020. In March 2017, despite opposition from

Cumberland Island Cumberland Island, in the southeastern United States, is the largest of the Sea Islands of Georgia. The long-staple Sea Island cotton was first grown here by a local family, the Millers, who helped Eli Whitney develop the cotton gin. With its ...

residents concerned about disturbance to

Cumberland Island National Seashore Cumberland Island National Seashore preserves most of Cumberland Island in Camden County, Georgia, the largest of Georgia's Golden Isles. The seashore features beaches and dunes, marshes, and freshwater lakes. The national seashore also preserve ...

and the possibility of injuries and damage from launches, and belief that the

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

was unlikely to authorize launches due to the fact that launch trajectories would pass over inhabited areas, the

Georgia General Assembly The Georgia General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is bicameral, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each of the General Assembly's 236 members serve two-year terms and are directly ...

approved legislation offering limited liability protection against spaceflight participant injury claims related to launches from the proposed spaceport, and in May Governor

Nathan Deal John Nathan Deal (born August 25, 1942) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 82nd governor of Georgia from 2011 to 2019. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party in 1992 a ...

signed HB 1. A 2017 study by

Georgia Southern University Georgia Southern University (GS or Georgia Southern) is a public research university in the U.S. state of Georgia. The flagship campus is in Statesboro, and other locations include the Armstrong Campus in Savannah and the Liberty Campus in Hi ...

determined that the spaceport could provide $22.5 million in yearly revenue to the region. In March 2018, the

FAA The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

, the US

regulatory agency A regulatory agency (regulatory body, regulator) or independent agency (independent regulatory agency) is a government authority that is responsible for exercising autonomous dominion over some area of human activity in a licensing and regulatin ...

for spaceports, approved the "draft status" of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the spaceport. On 20 December 2021, the

issued a launch site operator license for Spaceport Camden with a flight trajectory limited to a 100-degree azimuth. In March 2022, the project was rejected by Camden county voters in a referendum. Despite this, county representatives nonetheless attempted to move forward with the acquisition of the property while executing numerous legal maneuvers to invalidate the referendum, including an appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court on whether the voters had any right to override the county's decisions under the state constitution's Home Rule. In February 2023, the court unanimously agreed that the constitution allows the electorate to amend or repeal ordinances, resolutions, or regulations, and that the referendum was subsequently valid and enforceable.

Facilities and operations

The planned facilities at Spaceport Camden include a vertical launch site and a control center, with provision for viewing facilities. Up to twelve launches and twelve landings a year would be permitted. The construction of an innovation and research park at the spaceport has been proposed to attract additional technology-based industry and create jobs. In April 2017,

Vector Space Systems Vector Launch, Inc. (formerly Vector Space Systems) is an American space technology company which aims to launch suborbital and orbital payloads. Vector Launch declared bankruptcy in December 2019 and re-emerged in October 2020. History The c ...

announced that they would use the Spaceport Camden site to conduct a

suborbital A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital r ...

rocket test that summer. On 2 August 2017, the first launch from Spaceport Camden, of a Vector-R rocket, successfully took place. In 2018,

ABL Space Systems ABL Space Systems is an American private company, based in El Segundo, California, undertaking launch vehicle and launch systems technology development using CNC and 3D printing and minimized launch operations. The company manufactures its com ...

signed a lease with

for future operations in Spaceport Camden. On 20 December 2021, the

issued an operator license for Spaceport Camden.

Launch history

References

External links

* {{spaceport Spaceports in the United States Rocket launch sites in the United States Buildings and structures in Camden County, Georgia Science and technology in Georgia (U.S. state)