SLC-40
Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 40, or SLC-40 (pronounced “slick 40”), is a launch complex located at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Merritt Island, Florida. It was built in the 1960s for use to launch the US Air Force’s Titan III and family of rockets.
SLC-40 is located at the north end of the Space Force station, just south of SLC-41 which sits on Kennedy Space Center property. Currently, the pad is leased to and operated by SpaceX for its Falcon 9 rocket.
The pad’s first launch took place on June 18, 1965 of a Titan IIIC rocket carrying two transtages for vehicle testing. SLC-40 continued being used to launch various Titan rockets including the Titan 34D, the Commercial Titan III, and Titan IVs until 2005.
The pad infrastructure was demolished in 2008 to make way for SpaceX to take over and develop it for the Falcon 9.
The Air Force officially leased the pad out to SpaceX in 2007. The company built a hanger for rocket assembly and several other improvements including getting a liquid oxygen sphere tank from NASA. SLC-40 featured the first launch of both SpaceX’s Falcon 9 1.0 rocket and Dragon capsule on a demo mission in 2010.
SLC-40 has now become the workhorse launch pad for SpaceX’s workhorse rocket launching the vast majority of missions so far in 2023. The pad recently received a new crew access tower to support future Dragon flights, which it loss to LC-39A after the upgrade to Dragon 2 in 2020.
