Apollo program In May 1961, U.S. president
John F. Kennedy proposed to the
U.S. Congress the goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade and bringing him safely back to Earth. Congressional approval led to the launch of the
Apollo program, which required a massive expansion of NASA operations, including an expansion of launch operations from the Cape to adjacent Merritt Island to the north and west. First named Launch Complex 39C, Launch Complex 39A was designed to handle launches of the
Saturn V rocket, the largest and most powerful launch vehicle, which would propel the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon. The first launch from Launch Complex 39A occurred in 1967 with the first Saturn V launch, which carried the uncrewed
Apollo 4 spacecraft. The second uncrewed launch,
Apollo 6, also used Pad 39A. With the exception of
Apollo 10, which used Pad 39B (due to the "all-up" testing resulting in a 2-month turnaround period), all crewed Apollo-Saturn V launches, commencing with
Apollo 8, used Pad 39A.
Skylab program Launch Complex 39A was used for the uncrewed launch of the Skylab space station on May 14, 1973. This used a modified Saturn V
originally built for the cancelled Apollo 18 mission. The subsequent Skylab crewed missions launched from Launch Complex 39B using Saturn IB launch vehicles.
Space Shuttle With the advent of the
Space Shuttle program in the early 1980s, the original structure of the launch pads was remodeled for the needs of the Space Shuttle. The first usage of Pad 39A for the Space Shuttle came in 1979, when
Enterprise was used to check the facilities prior to the first operational launch. Since then, Pad 39A hosted all Space Shuttle launches until January 1986, when would become the first to launch from pad 39B during the ill-fated
STS-51-L mission. During the launch of
Discovery on
STS-124 on May 31, 2008, the pad at LC-39A suffered extensive damage, in particular to the concrete trench used to deflect the SRBs' flames. The subsequent investigation found that the damage was the result of carbonation of epoxy and corrosion of steel anchors that held the
refractory bricks in the trench in place. The damage had been exacerbated by the fact that
hydrochloric acid is an exhaust by-product of the solid rocket boosters. Just as for the first 24 shuttle flights, LC-39A supported the final shuttle flights, starting with
STS-117 in June 2007 and ending with the
retirement of the Shuttle fleet in July 2011. In total, Pad 39A hosted 94 launches from 1967 to 2011, including 12 Saturn V rockets and 82 space shuttles. Prior to the SpaceX lease agreement, the pad remained as it was when
Atlantis launched on the final shuttle mission on July 8, 2011, complete with a
mobile launcher platform. The pad was originally going to be modified for the
Ares V rocket for the
Constellation program in the mid 2010s, looking identical to LC-39B with the three lightning towers. The Ares I was planned to launch on the adjacent 39B but in 2010, the Constellation program was cancelled.
SpaceX (at podium) announces the signing of the pad 39A lease agreement on April 14, 2014.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden (far left) and
SpaceX COO
Gwynne Shotwell stand nearby. Talks for use of the pad were underway between NASA and
Space Florida—the
State of Florida's
economic development agency—as early as 2011, but no deal materialized by 2012, and NASA then pursued other options for removing the pad from the federal government inventory. and followed that, in May 2013, with a formal solicitation for proposals for
commercial use of the pad. There were two competing bids for the commercial use of the launch complex. Prior to the end of the bid period, and prior to any public announcement by NASA of the results of the process, Blue Origin filed a protest with the
U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) "over what it says is a plan by NASA to award an exclusive commercial lease to SpaceX for use of mothballed space shuttle launch pad 39A". On December 12, 2013, the GAO denied the protest and sided with NASA, which argued that the solicitation contained no preference on the use of the facility as multi-use or single-use. "The [solicitation] document merely asks bidders to explain their reasons for selecting one approach instead of the other and how they would manage the facility". On December 13, 2013, NASA announced that it had selected SpaceX as the new commercial tenant. On April 14, 2014, SpaceX signed a lease agreement that gave it a 20-year exclusive lease on LC-39A. SpaceX planned to launch their launch vehicles from the pad and build a new hangar nearby.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, stated that he wanted to shift most of SpaceX's NASA launches to LC-39A, including
commercial cargo and
crew missions to the
International Space Station.
Modifications In 2015, SpaceX built the
Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) just outside the perimeter of the existing launch pad in order to house both the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy rockets, and their associated hardware and payloads, during preparation for flight. Both types of launch vehicles are transported from the HIF to the launch pad aboard a Transporter Erector (TE) which rides on rails up the former crawlerway path. The work on both the HIF building and the pad was substantially complete by late 2015. A rollout test of the new Transporter Erector was conducted in November 2015. In February 2016, SpaceX indicated that they had "completed and activated Launch Complex 39A", as they had architects and engineers working on the new design and modifications since 2013. By late 2014, a preliminary date for a
wet dress rehearsal of the Falcon Heavy was set for no earlier than July 1, 2015. Due to a failure in a June 2015 Falcon 9 launch, SpaceX delayed launching the Falcon Heavy in order to focus on the Falcon 9's failure investigation and its return to flight. In early 2016, considering the busy Falcon 9 launch manifest, it became unclear if the Falcon Heavy would be the first vehicle to launch from Pad 39A, or if one or more Falcon 9 missions would precede a Falcon Heavy launch. In the following months, the Falcon Heavy launch was delayed multiple times and eventually pushed back to February 2018. SpaceX used the former
Fixed Service Structure (FSS) of the Pad 39A
launch towers and initially intended to extend it above its former height. It did not need the
Rotating Service Structure (RSS) NASA removed the Orbiter Servicing Arm—with intent to use the space later to build a museum—and the
white room by which astronauts entered the Space Shuttle. In August 2018, SpaceX's Crew Access Arm (CAA) was installed on a new level, which was built at the necessary height to enter the Crew Dragon spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket. It very closely resembles
jetways that are frequently found at airports. In September 2018, the refurbished Space Shuttle Emergency Egress System was raised to this new level. SpaceX added a crew gantry access arm and white room to allow for crew and cargo ingress to the vehicle. The existing Space Shuttle evacuation slide-wire basket system was re-purposed to provide a safe emergency egress for the Dragon crew in the event of an emergency on the pad that does not necessitate using the
Crew Dragon's launch abort system". In 2019, SpaceX began substantial modification to LC 39A in order to begin work on phase 1 of the construction to prepare the facility to launch
prototypes of the large -diameter
methalox reusable rocket—
Starship—from a launch stand, which would fly from 39A on suborbital test flight trajectories with six or fewer
Raptor engines. A second phase of the construction was planned for 2020 to build a much more capable launch mount capable of launching the entire Starship launch vehicle, powered by 33 Raptor engines and producing a total of liftoff thrust when departing 39A. In August 2019, SpaceX submitted an Environmental Assessment for the Starship launch system at Kennedy Space Center. This document included plans for the construction of additional structures at LC-39A to support Starship launches, including a dedicated pad, liquid methane tanks, and a Landing Zone. These are separate from the existing structures that support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. In December 2021, SpaceX started construction of a Starship orbital launch pad on the site. On June 16, 2022, the first tower segment for the Starship orbital pad arrived at LC-39A. Stacking began on June 21, and the Starship launch mount was also under construction. In 2024, an additional Environmental Impact Statement was underway to support an annual launch cadence of 40+ Starship launches. In early 2025, the original launch mount for LC-39a was scrapped in favor of a new design. The new launch mount was fabricated at SpaceX's Roberts Road facility and was transported to the launch complex for installation on November 4th 2025.
Launch history The first SpaceX launch from pad 39A was
SpaceX CRS-10 on February 19, 2017, using a Falcon 9 launch vehicle; it was the company's 10th cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station, and the first uncrewed launch from 39A since Skylab. While
Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) was undergoing reconstruction after the loss of the
AMOS-6 satellite on September 1, 2016, all SpaceX's east coast launches were from Pad 39A until SLC-40 became operational again in December 2017. These included the May 1, 2017, launch of
NROL-76, the first SpaceX mission for the
National Reconnaissance Office, with a classified payload. On February 6, 2018, Pad 39A hosted the successful liftoff of the Falcon Heavy on its
maiden launch, carrying Elon Musk's
Tesla Roadster car to space; and the first flight of the human-rated spacecraft ; (
Demo-1) took place there on March 2, 2019. The second Falcon Heavy flight, carrying the
Arabsat-6A communications satellite for Arabsat of Saudi Arabia, successfully launched on April 11, 2019. The satellite provides
Ku-band and
Ka-band communication services for the
Middle East and
northern Africa, as well as for
South Africa. The launch was notable as it marked the first time that SpaceX was able to successfully soft-land all three of the
reusable booster stages, which were to be refurbished for future launches. The
Crew Dragon Demo-2 test flight launched with astronauts
Bob Behnken and
Doug Hurley from Launch Complex 39A on 30 May 2020, and docked to the forward port of the
Harmony module of the
ISS on 31 May 2020. The first operational
Commercial Crew mission
Crew-1 was launched on November 15,
2020. SpaceX launched the
IM-1 robotic lander for NASA's
Commercial Lunar Payload Services program on 15 February 2024, returning the pad to Lunar missions since the end of the Apollo program. The Starlink Group 6-56 mission launched on 8 May 2024, and was the Falcon 9's 83rd launch from LC-39A. That milestone made the rocket family the pad leader for launches from that launch complex, surpassing the Space Shuttle's 82 launches. == Current status ==