World's Spaceports

There are roughly 30 active orbital launch sites worldwide, with more under development. The busiest include Cape Canaveral/KSC (Florida), Vandenberg (California), Baikonur (Kazakhstan), Kourou (French Guiana), and Jiuquan/Wenchang (China). Orbital Radar profiles 13 of the most important sites.

Rockets launch from specialised spaceports around the world. The site's latitude is crucial: equatorial locations like Kourou (5°N) are ideal for geostationary orbit, while high-latitude sites like Vandenberg and Andøya serve polar orbits. All sites need open ocean or unpopulated land downrange for safety.

Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral combined host more orbital launches than any other site, at a rate that has passed 100 missions per year, dominated by SpaceX Falcon 9 missions.

Earth rotates fastest at the equator, giving eastward-launching rockets a free velocity boost of up to ~465 m/s. This makes equatorial sites like Kourou (5°N) and Wenchang (19°N) more efficient for GEO launches. Conversely, high-latitude sites are needed for polar orbits, since launching over populated land at low latitudes to reach polar inclinations would be unsafe.

Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is the world's oldest and most historic spaceport, established in 1955. It launched Sputnik (1957) and Yuri Gagarin (1961) and has hosted over 1,500 orbital missions.