Launch Complex 39 (Kennedy Space Center)

From two pads on a low spit of Florida marshland, humanity left Earth for another world. Launch Complex 39 sent every Apollo mission to the Moon, including Apollo 11's historic first landing crew, and later launched the majority of Space Shuttle missions over three decades. Built specifically for the towering Saturn V rocket, it remains NASA's premier launch site, now hosting commercial and deep-space missions that carry the same ambitions into a new era.

NASA built Launch Complex 39 in the mid-1960s specifically to handle the immense Saturn V rocket needed for the Apollo program's Moon landings, an engineering challenge that required entirely new infrastructure, including the massive Vehicle Assembly Building and a crawler-transporter to move fully stacked rockets to the pad. Pad 39A hosted the first launch in 1967 and became the site of Apollo 11's liftoff on July 16, 1969, carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins toward the first crewed Moon landing.

All told, Pads 39A and 39B launched every Apollo lunar mission, the Skylab space station, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. After the Apollo program ended, both pads were modified to launch the Space Shuttle, hosting the vast majority of the 135 Shuttle missions flown between 1981 and 2011, including the tragic Challenger launch in 1986.

Following the Shuttle program's retirement, NASA modernized the complex for new vehicles: Pad 39B now supports NASA's Space Launch System for the Artemis Moon program, while Pad 39A was leased to SpaceX in 2014 and has launched Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions, including crewed flights to the International Space Station. The complex remains an active launch site and is designated a National Historic Landmark for its role in the Apollo program.