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Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 17

 
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Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 17
 
 
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Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 17 is a launch site at Merritt Island, Florida
Florida

Florida is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States of the United States, bordering Alabama to the northwest and Georgia to the northeast....
.

It was first built in 1956 for the Thor ballistic missile program, but later was used to launch probes to the Moon
Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the List of natural satellites by diameter satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is km, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth....
 and planets, solar observatories and weather satellites.

LC-17 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station

The Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is a detachment of the 45th Space Wing , at nearby Patrick Air Force Base; located on Cape Canaveral in the State of Florida, CCAFS is the primary Launch Head of the Eastern Range....
 features two active expendable launch vehicle (ELV) launch pads, 17-A and 17-B. The pads are run by the US Air Force's 45th Space Wing and have supported more than 300 Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense

The United States Department of Defense is the federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government relating directly to national security and the Military of the United States....
, NASA
NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an agency of the Federal government of the United States, responsible for the nation's public list of space agencies....
 and commercial missile and rocket launches. Pad 17-A supported its first Thor missile launch on 3 August 1957, and Pad 17-B supported its first Thor launch on 25 January 1957.






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Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 17 is a launch site at Merritt Island, Florida
Florida

Florida is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States of the United States, bordering Alabama to the northwest and Georgia to the northeast....
.

It was first built in 1956 for the Thor ballistic missile program, but later was used to launch probes to the Moon
Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the List of natural satellites by diameter satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is km, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth....
 and planets, solar observatories and weather satellites.

LC-17 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station

The Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is a detachment of the 45th Space Wing , at nearby Patrick Air Force Base; located on Cape Canaveral in the State of Florida, CCAFS is the primary Launch Head of the Eastern Range....
 features two active expendable launch vehicle (ELV) launch pads, 17-A and 17-B. The pads are run by the US Air Force's 45th Space Wing and have supported more than 300 Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense

The United States Department of Defense is the federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government relating directly to national security and the Military of the United States....
, NASA
NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an agency of the Federal government of the United States, responsible for the nation's public list of space agencies....
 and commercial missile and rocket launches. Pad 17-A supported its first Thor missile launch on 3 August 1957, and Pad 17-B supported its first Thor launch on 25 January 1957. The site was upgraded in the early 1960s to support a variety of more modern Expendable Launch Vehicles, which were derived from the basic Thor booster. The modern ELVs based on Thor came to be called the Delta family of rockets.

Thirty-five early Delta rocket missions were launched from Complex 17 between the beginning of 1960 and the end of 1965. At that time the complex was run by the Air Force. The Air Force transferred Complex 17 to NASA
NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an agency of the Federal government of the United States, responsible for the nation's public list of space agencies....
 in 1965, but the site was returned to the Air Force in 1988 to support the Delta II
Delta II

Delta II is a space launch system originally designed and built by McDonnell Douglas. Delta II is part of the Delta rocket family and has been in service since 1989....
 program.

As Delta II launches continued over the next decade, Pad 17-B was modified in 1997 to support a new, more powerful launch vehicle, the Delta III. The Delta III made its first successful launch debut on Pad 17-B 23 August 2000.

Among the major NASA missions launched from the complex were the Explorer
Explorer program

The Explorer program was the United States's first successful attempt to launch an satellite. It began as a U.S. Army proposal to place a scientific satellite into orbit during the International Geophysical Year....
 and Pioneer
Pioneer program

The Pioneer program is a series of United States unmanned space missions that was designed for planetary exploration. There were a number of such missions in the program, but the most notable were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, which explored the outer planets and left the solar system....
 space probes, all of the Orbiting Solar Observatories, Solar Maximum
Solar maximum

Solar maximum or solar max is the period of greatest solar activity in the solar cycle of the sun. During solar maximum, sunspots appear....
, Biological Satellites (BIOS), Television Infrared Observations Satellites (TIROS
TIROS

TIROS, or Television Infrared Observation Satellite, was a series of early weather satellites launched by NASA, beginning with TIROS-1 in 1960....
) and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite
Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite program is a key element in United States' National Weather Service operations. GOES weather imagery and quantitative sounding data are a continuous and reliable stream of natural environment information used to support weather forecasting, severe storm tracking, and meteorological res...
s (GOES).

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