The history of the Eastern Range began on 18 October 1940, with the activation of the
Naval Air Station Banana River which primarily supported antisubmarine patrol plane squadrons equipped with the
PBY Catalina and
PBM Mariner during
World War II. NAS Banana River was deactivated and put into a caretaker status on 1 September 1947. Launches of captured German
V-2 rockets had been ongoing since the end of World War II at
White Sands Proving Grounds in
New Mexico, but it became clear that a much longer range away from heavily populated areas would be needed. The
Joint Research and Development Board established the Committee on the Long Range Proving Ground in October 1946 to study locations for such a range, with three potential sites emerging: along the northern coast of
Washington state with a range along the
Aleutian Islands;
El Centro, California, with a range along the
Baja California Peninsula; and
NAS Banana River with a launch site at
Cape Canaveral and a range over the
Bahamas and into the
Atlantic Ocean. On 10 June 1949, the Banana River Naval Air Station was redesignated the Joint Long Range Proving Ground Base and Advance Headquarters, Joint Long Range Proving Ground and the Air Force Division, Joint Long Range Proving Ground was established. the Air Force Missile Test Center was redesignated the
Air Force Eastern Test Range (AFETR) in 1964, In 2014,
Raytheon Technologies won a contract to operate the Western and Eastern Ranges for the next 10 years through their subsidiary
Range Generation Next. In February 2017,
SpaceX's
CRS-10 launch was the "first operational use" of the
Autonomous Flight Safety System (AFSS) on "either of
Air Force Space Command Eastern or
Western Ranges". The following SpaceX flight,
EchoStar 23 in March 2017, was the last SpaceX launch utilizing the historic system of ground radars, tracking computers, and personnel in launch bunkers that had been used for over sixty years for all launches from the Eastern Range. For all future SpaceX launches, AFSS has replaced "the ground-based mission flight control personnel and equipment with on-board Positioning, Navigation and Timing sources and decision logic. The benefits of AFSS include increased public safety, reduced reliance on range infrastructure, reduced range spacelift cost, increased schedule predictability and availability, operational flexibility, and launch slot flexibility". In 2017, the Eastern Range suffered two hurricanes which caused extensive damage and only allowed 19 launches that year. By 2017, the Eastern Range had upgraded their legacy operational processes and equipment to be able to support a much faster frequency of rocket launches for SpaceX AFTS-controlled rocket launches, but they did not use the capability when an opportunity arose to increase range launch rate in October 2018. The first planned use of the more rapid rate was in August 2019. , the range said that it could "support up to 48 launches per year from Florida" with an "eventual goal [to] get to a capability to launch two different rockets within 24 hours". == Launch statistics ==