The facility is south-southeast of NASA's Kennedy Space Center on adjacent Merritt Island, with the two linked by bridges and causeways.

Portions of the base have been designated a National Historic Landmark for their association with the early years of the American space program.

[11][12] The CCSFS area had been used by the United States government to test missiles since 1949, when President Harry S. Truman established the Joint Long Range Proving Ground at Cape Canaveral.

Orbital flights were launched by derivatives of the Air Force's larger Atlas D missile from LC-14.

On November 29, 1963, following the death of President John F. Kennedy, his successor Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11129 renaming both NASA's Merritt Island Launch Operations Center and "the facilities of Station No.

However, the geographical name change proved to be unpopular, owing to the historical longevity of Cape Canaveral (one of the oldest place-names in the United States, dating to the early 1500s).

[21][22] On August 7, 2020, U.S. military contracts referred to the installation as Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

[11] The two-man Gemini spacecraft was launched into orbit by a derivative of the Air Force Titan II missile.

Later Gemini flights were supported by seven uncrewed launches of the Agena Target Vehicle on the Atlas-Agena from LC-14, to develop rendezvous and docking, critical for Apollo.

[24] The Apollo program's goal of landing a man on the Moon required development of the Saturn family of rockets.

The large Saturn V rocket necessary to take men to the Moon required a larger launch facility than Cape Canaveral could provide, so NASA built the Kennedy Space Center located west and north of Canaveral on Merritt Island.

The first crewed CSM flight, AS-204 or Apollo 1, was planned to launch from LC-34 on February 21, 1967, but the entire crew of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed in a cabin fire during a spacecraft test on pad 34 on January 27, 1967.

The LC-34 service structure and umbilical tower were razed, leaving only the concrete launch pedestal as a monument to the Apollo 1 crew.

A Titan III has about the same payload capacity as the Saturn IB at a considerable cost savings.

Complex 41 later became the launch site for the most powerful uncrewed U.S. rocket, the Titan IV, developed by the Air Force.

Besides Project Gemini, the Atlas-Agena launch complexes LC-12 and LC-13 were used during the 1960s for the uncrewed Ranger and Lunar Orbiter programs and the first five Mariner interplanetary probes.

The Atlas-Centaur launch complex LC-36 was used for the 1960s Surveyor uncrewed lunar landing program and the last five Mariner probes through 1973.

From 1974 to 1977 the powerful Titan IIIE served as the heavy-lift vehicle for NASA, launching the Viking and Voyager series of planetary spacecraft and the Cassini–Huygens Saturn probe from LC-41.

The Boeing X-37B, a reusable uncrewed spacecraft operated by USSF, which is also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), has been successfully launched four times from Cape Canaveral.

[33] In the case of high-inclination (polar) launches, the latitude does not matter, but the Cape Canaveral area is not suitable, because inhabited areas underlie these trajectories; Vandenberg Space Force Base, Cape Canaveral's West Coast counterpart, or the smaller Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska (PSCA) are used instead.

[34] Hangar AE, located in the CCAFS Industrial Area, collects telemetry from launches all over the United States.

Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Skid Strip (ICAO: KXMR, FAA LID: XMR) is a military airport at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), 7 nautical miles (13 km; 8.1 mi) northeast of Cocoa Beach, Florida.

[37] In the 1960s the Douglas C-133 Cargomaster was a frequent visitor, carrying modified Atlas and Titan missiles, used as launch vehicles for crewed and uncrewed space programs leading to the Apollo Moon landings.

Today, it is predominantly used by USAF C-130 Hercules, C-17 Globemaster III and C-5 Galaxy aircraft transporting satellite payloads to CCSFS for mating with launch vehicles.

A tenant command located at Cape Canaveral SFS is the U.S. Navy's Naval Ordnance Test Unit (NOTU).

As a major shore command led by a Navy captain, NOTU was created in 1950 and initially directed almost all of its efforts towards the development and subsequent support of the submarine-launched Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) program.

[citation needed] In 2023, after weeks of searching, students from the University of Central Florida, working with archaeologists, discovered the site of the original blockhouse supporting the first Bumper launch just north of the pad at LC-3, including the slab foundation and some of the surrounding Marston mat, all long-buried under heavy scrub.

Launch Complex 25 (LC-25) was a four-pad site built for test flights of the US Navy's submarine-launched ballistic missiles Polaris, Poseidon and Trident[46] It was active from 1958 to 1979.

In November 2012, ground was broken for a new $185-million Navy missile test facility to be built over the underground structures at LC-25 and LC-29 called the Strategic Weapon System Ashore.

In November 2012, ground was broken for a new $185-million Navy missile test facility to be built over the underground structures at LC-25 and LC-29 called the Strategic Weapons System Ashore.