Qualla: Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport

Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

About 24 hours before an Antares launch, the rocket comes out of the Horizontal Integration Facility lying on its side. A wheeled transporter-erector rolls it through the salt air of Wallops Island to Pad 0A, sets it down on the launch mount, and then slowly tilts it vertical against the sky. A few miles north, in Chincoteague, every restaurant is filling up. Across the marsh, snow geese keep doing what snow geese do. This is the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, a state-owned commercial launch site on land leased from NASA - the only place in the United States where a Virginia agency runs a road to orbit, and the most consistently overlooked spaceport in the country.

Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport: How Virginia Got Into the Space Business

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1995 the Virginia General Assembly created the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority - also called Virginia Space - to develop a commercial space industry in the Commonwealth. The idea came out of Old Dominion University's Batten College of Engineering, and Dr. Billie Ree...

Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport: Pad 0A and the Cygnus Run

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Pad 0A is the workhorse. Its original tower was demolished in September 2008 and the pad rebuilt for Northrop Grumman's Antares - a medium-lift rocket carrying Cygnus cargo modules to resupply the International Space Station. The modifications added a Horizontal Integration Facil...

Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport: Pad 0B and the Lunar Probe

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Pad 0B has been quieter and weirder. It came online in 1999 and got a mobile service tower in 2004. It is used by Northrop Grumman's solid-fueled Minotaur family - rockets built largely from decommissioned ICBM motors that the U.S. government keeps in inventory. Minotaur launches...

Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport: Rocket Lab Plants a Flag

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In October 2018, Rocket Lab announced MARS as the home of its second launch site. The New Zealand-American company already had Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand, and wanted American soil for U.S. government missions. Construction on Launch Complex 2 began in February 2019. T...

Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport: Pad 0D and What Comes Next

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In October 2023, construction began on a new pad between 0A and 0B. This is Launch Pad 0D - also called Launch Complex 3 - and it hosts Rocket Lab's Neutron, a medium-lift, partially reusable rocket designed to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9. The pad was completed and officially ...