Wallops Flight Facility
Background[edit]
Wallops Flight Facility (IATA: WAL, ICAO: KWAL), located on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, is operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center primarily as a rocket launch site to support science and exploration missions for NASA and other federal agencies. WFF includes an extensively instrumented range to support launches of more than a dozen types of sounding rockets, small expendable suborbital and orbital rockets, high altitude balloon flights carrying scientific instruments for atmospheric and astronomical research and—using its Research Airport—flight tests of aeronautical research aircraft including unmanned aerial vehicles. The WFF range supports science missions for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and occasionally for foreign governments and commercial organizations. It also supports development tests and exercises involving U.S. Navy aircraft and ship-based electronics and weapon systems in the Virginia Capes operating area near the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay.
In addition to its fixed-location instrumentation assets, the WFF range includes mobile radars, telemetry receivers, and command transmitters that can be deployed by aircraft to locations around the world to establish a temporary range where no other instrumentation exists to ensure safety and collect data to enable and support suborbital rocket launches from remote sites. The WFF mobile range assets have been used to support rocket launches from locations in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, South America, Africa, Europe, Australia, and even at sea.
More than 1,000 full-time Civil Service employees work for NASA at Wallops Flight Facility each day, along with more than 300 Navy personnel and almost 100 employees of NOAA.
History[edit]
The Wallops Visitor Center has a variety of hands-on exhibits and it hosts weekly educational activities and programs designed to enable children to explore and learn about the technologies designed and used by NASA researchers and scientists. In addition, one Saturday each month, NASA invites model rocketry enthusiasts to bring their own rockets and launch them from the WFF rocket launch site. NASA personnel also participate, launching models of various rockets and explaining the spacecraft they carry in real life.
In 1945, NASA's predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), established a rocket launch site on Wallops Island under the direction of the Langley Research Center. This site was designated the Pilotless Aircraft Research Station and conducted high-speed aerodynamic research to supplement wind tunnel and laboratory investigations into the problems of flight. In 1958, Congress established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which absorbed Langley Research Center and other NACA field centers and research facilities. At that time, the Pilotless Aircraft Research Station became a separate facility - Wallops Station - operating directly under NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Location[edit]
NASA GSFC Wallops Flight Facility and Vicinity, with its three separate parcels of real property. Enlarge NASA GSFC Wallops Flight Facility and Vicinity, with its three separate parcels of real property.
The WFF Main Base is located on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, on the Delmarva Peninsula 5 miles west of Chincoteague, Virginia, approximately 90 miles north of Norfolk, Virginia, and 40 miles southeast of Salisbury, Maryland. WFF consists of three separate parcels of real property totaling 6,200 acres (25 km²): the Main Base, the Mainland, and the Wallops Island Launch Site. The Mainland and the Wallops Island Launch Site are approximately 7 miles southeast of the Main Base.
Facilities Overview[edit]
WFF has a wide variety of facilities to support its operations, providing a combination of low cost access to space and the ability to respond quickly to the demand for range services. The NASA Wallops Research Range is like a “Wind Tunnel in the Sky”, providing benefits to the scientific and experimental launch vehicle communities, and offering test support to enable development and testing of space exploration systems and technologies.
